“You here, Sieur la Peyrade?  You have been doing fine things for your friend Thuillier!”

“How are you?” asked la Peyrade, in a tone both resolute and friendly.

“I?” replied Cerizet.  “As you see, still rowing my galley; and, to follow out the nautical metaphor, allow me to ask what wind has blown you hither; is it, perchance, the wind of adversity?”

La Peyrade, without replying, took a chair beside his questioner, after which he said in a grave tone:—­

“My dear fellow, we have something to say to each other.”

“I suppose,” said Cerizet, spitefully, “the Thuilliers have grown cold since the seizure of the pamphlet.”

“The Thuilliers are ungrateful people; I have broken with them,” replied la Peyrade.

“Rupture or dismissal,” said Cerizet, “their door is shut against you; and from what Dutocq tells me, I judge that Brigitte is handling you without gloves.  You see, my friend, what it is to try and manage affairs alone; complications come, and there’s no one to smooth the angles.  If you had got me that lease, I should have had a footing at the Thuilliers’, Dutocq would not have abandoned you, and together we could have brought you gently into port.”

“But suppose I don’t want to re-enter that port?” said la Peyrade, with some sharpness.  “I tell you I’ve had enough of those Thuilliers, and I broke with them myself; I warned them to get out of my sun; and if Dutocq told you anything else you may tell him from me that he lies.  Is that clear enough?  It seems to me I’ve made it plain.”

“Well, exactly, my good fellow, if you are so savage against your Thuilliers you ought to have put me among them, and then you’d have seen me avenge you.”

“There you are right,” said la Peyrade; “I wish I could have set you at their legs—­but as for that matter of the lease I tell you again, I was not master of it.”

“Of course,” said Cerizet, “it was your conscience which obliged you to tell Brigitte that the twelve thousand francs a year I expected to make out of it were better in her pocket than in mine.”

“It seems that Dutocq continues the honorable profession of spy which he formerly practised at the ministry of finance,” said la Peyrade, “and, like others who do that dirty business, he makes his reports more witty than truthful—­”

“Take care!” said Cerizet; “you are talking of my patron in his own lair.”

“Look here!” said la Peyrade.  “I have come to talk to you on serious matters.  Will you do me the favor to drop the Thuilliers and all their belongings, and give me your attention?”

“Say on, my friend,” said Cerizet, laying down his pen, which had never ceased to run, up to this moment, “I am listening.”

“You talked to me some time ago,” said la Peyrade, “about marrying a girl who was rich, fully of age, and slightly hysterical, as you were pleased to put it euphemistically.”