“I am not the doctor,” replied Cerizet, who now decidedly declined that role.  “I am Madame Cardinal’s business man.  I have just advised her to have a cot-bed put up, so as to nurse her uncle night and day; though, perhaps, she will have to get a regular nurse.”

“I can help her,” said Madame Perrache.  “I nurse women in childbed.”

“Well, we’ll see about it,” said Cerizet; “I’ll arrange all that.  Who is the tenant on your first floor?”

“Monsieur du Portail.  He has lodged here these thirty years.  He is a man with a good income, monsieur; highly respectable, and elderly.  You know people who invest in the Funds live on their incomes.  He used to be in business.  But it is more than eleven years now since he has been trying to restore the reason of a daughter of one of his friends, Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade.  She has the best advice, I can tell you; the very first doctors in Paris; only this morning they had a consultation.  But so far nothing has cured her; and they have to watch her pretty close; for sometimes she gets up and walks at night—­”

“Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade!” exclaimed Cerizet; “are you sure of the name?”

“I’ve heard Madame Katte, her nurse, who also does the cooking, call her so a thousand times, monsieur; though, generally, neither Monsieur Bruneau, the valet, nor Madame Katte say much.  It’s like talking to the wall to try and get any information out of them.  We have been porters here these twenty years and we’ve never found out anything about Monsieur du Portail yet.  More than that, monsieur, he owns the little house alongside; you see the double door from here.  Well, he can go out that way and receive his company too, and we know nothing about it.  Our owner doesn’t know anything more than we do; when people ring at that door, Monsieur Bruneau goes and opens it.”

“Then you didn’t see the gentleman who is talking with him in the garden go by this way?”

“Bless me! no, that I didn’t!”

“Ah!” thought Cerizet as he got into the cabriolet, “she must be the daughter of that uncle of Theodose.  I wonder if du Portail can be the secret benefactor who sent money from time to time to that rascal?  Suppose I send an anonymous letter to the old fellow, warning him of the danger the barrister runs from those notes for twenty-five thousand francs?”

An hour later the cot-bed had arrived for Madame Cardinal, to whom the inquisitive portress offered her services to bring her something to eat.

“Do you want to see the rector?” Madame Cardinal inquired of her uncle.

She had noticed that the arrival of the bed seemed to draw him from his somnolence.

“I want wine!” replied the pauper.

“How do you feel now, Pere Toupillier?” asked Madame Perrache, in a coaxing voice.

“I tell you I want wine,” repeated the old man, with an energetic insistence scarcely to be expected of his feebleness.