“You can pay off those notes.”

At a single glance the shrewd attorney had comprehended the whole scheme of the barrister.

CHAPTER XIV

ONE OF CERIZET’S FEMALE CLIENTS

The next morning, at daybreak, Theodose went to the office of the banker of the poor, to see the effect produced upon his enemy by the punctual payment of the night before, and to make another effort to get rid of his hornet.

He found Cerizet standing up, in conference with a woman, and he received an imperative sign to keep at a distance and not to interrupt the interview.  The barrister was therefore reduced to conjectures as to the importance of this woman, an importance revealed by the eager look on the face of the lender “by the little week.”  Theodose had a presentiment, though a very vague one, that the upshot of this conference would have some influence on Cerizet’s own arrangements, for he suddenly beheld on that crafty countenance the change produced by a dawning hope.

“But, my dear mamma Cardinal—­”

“Yes, my good monsieur—­”

“What is it you want—?”

“It must be decided—­”

These beginnings, or these ends of sentences were the only gleams of light that the animated conversation, carried on in the lowest tones with lip to ear and ear to lip, conveyed to the motionless witness, whose attention was fixed on Madame Cardinal.

Madame Cardinal was one of Cerizet’s earliest clients; she peddled fish.  If Parisians know these creations peculiar to their soil, foreigners have no suspicion of their existence; and Mere Cardinal —­technologically speaking, of course, deserved all the interest she excited in Theodose.  So many women of her species may be met with in the streets that the passers-by give them no more attention than they give to the three thousand pictures of the Salon.  But as she stood in Cerizet’s office the Cardinal had all the value of an isolated masterpiece; she was a complete and perfect type of her species.

The woman was mounted on muddy sabots; but her feet, carefully wrapped in gaiters, were still further protected by stout and thick-ribbed stockings.  Her cotton gown, adorned with a glounce of mud, bore the imprint of the strap which supported the fish-basket.  Her principal garment was a shawl of what was called “rabbit’s-hair cashmere,” the two ends of which were knotted behind, above her bustle—­for we must needs employ a fashionable word to express the effect produced by the transversal pressure of the basket upon her petticoats, which projected below it, in shape like a cabbage.  A printed cotton neckerchief, of the coarsest description, gave to view a red neck, ribbed and lined like the surface of a pond where people have skated.  Her head was covered in a yellow silk foulard, twined in a manner that was rather picturesque.  Short and stout, and ruddy of skin, Mere Cardinal probably drank her little drop