Then, as Toupillier seemed to be in the grasp of a violent nightmare, she leaned over him so as not to lose a word of his speech, hoping to gather from it some important revelation.  At this moment a slight rap given to the door, from which the careful nurse had removed the key, announced the arrival of Cerizet.

“Well?” he said, on entering.

“He has taken the drug.  He’s been sound asleep these two hours; just now, in dreaming, he was talking of diamonds.”

“Well,” said Cerizet, “it wouldn’t be surprising if we found some.  These paupers when they set out to be rich, like to pile up everything.”

“Ah ca!” cried the Cardinal, suddenly, “what made you go and tell Mere Perrache that you were my man of business, and that you weren’t a doctor?  I thought we agreed this morning that you were coming as a doctor?”

Cerizet did not choose to admit that the usurpation of that title had seemed to him dangerous; he feared to discourage his accomplice.

“I saw that the woman was going to propose a consultation,” he replied, “and I got out of it that way.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Madame Cardinal, “they say fine minds come together; that was my dodge, too.  Calling you my man of business seemed to give that old pilferer a few ideas.  Did they see you come in, those porters?”

“I thought, as I went by,” replied Cerizet, “that the woman was asleep in her chair.”

“And well she might be,” said the Cardinal, significantly.

“What, really?” said Cerizet.

“Parbleu!” replied the fishwife; “what’s enough for one is enough for two; the rest of the stuff went that way.”

“As for the husband, he was there,” said Cerizet; “for he gave me a gracious sign of recognition, which I could have done without.”

“Wait till it is quite dark, and we’ll play him a comedy that shall fool him finely.”

Accordingly, ten minutes later, the fishwife, with a vim that delighted the usurer, organized for the innocent porter the comedy of a monsieur who would not, out of politeness, let her accompany him to the door; she herself with equal politeness insisting.  Appearing to conduct the sham physician into the street gate she pretended that the wind had blown out of her lamp, and under pretext of relighting it she put out that of Perrache.  All this racket, accompanied by exclamations and a bewildering loquacity, was so briskly carried out that the porter, if summoned before the police-court, would not have hesitated to swear that the doctor, whose arrival he had witnessed, left the house between nine and ten o’clock.