“Well done!” cried Cerizet.  “I expected this; but you’ve been some time coming to it.”

“In offering me this heiress, what did you have in your mind?” asked la Peyrade.

“Parbleu! to help you to a splendid stroke of business.  You had only to stoop and take it.  I was formally charged to propose it to you; and, as there wasn’t any brokerage, I should have relied wholly on your generosity.”

“But you are not the only person who was commissioned to make me that offer.  A woman had the same order.”

“A woman!” cried Cerizet in a perfectly natural tone of surprise.  “Not that I know of.”

“Yes, a foreigner, young and pretty, whom you must have met in the family of the bride, to whom she seems to be ardently devoted.”

“Never,” said Cerizet, “never has there been the slightest question of a woman in this negotiation.  I have every reason to believe that I am exclusively charged with it.”

“What!” said la Peyrade, fixing upon Cerizet a scrutinizing eye, “did you never hear of the Comtesse Torna de Godollo?”

“Never, in all my life; this is the first time I ever heard that name.”

“Then,” said la Peyrade, “it must really have been another match; for that woman, after many singular preliminaries, too long to explain to you, made me a formal offer of the hand of a young woman much richer than Mademoiselle Colleville—­”

“And hysterical?” asked Cerizet.

“No, she did not embellish the proposal with that accessory; but there’s another detail which may put you on the track of her.  Madame de Godollo exhorted me, if I wished to push the matter, to go and see a certain Monsieur du Portail—­”

“Rue Honore-Chevalier?” exclaimed Cerizet, quickly.

“Precisely.”

“Then it is the same marriage which is offered to you through two different mediums.  It is strange I was not informed of this collaboration!”

“In short,” said la Peyrade, “you not only didn’t have wind of the countess’s intervention, but you don’t know her, and you can’t give me any information about her—­is that so?”

“At present I can’t,” replied Cerizet, “but I’ll find out about her; for the whole proceeding is rather cavalier towards me; but this employment of two agents only shows you how desirable you are to the family.”

At this moment the door of the room was opened cautiously, a woman’s head appeared, and a voice, which was instantly recognized by la Peyrade, said, addressing the copying-clerk:—­

“Ah! excuse me!  I see monsieur is busy.  Could I say a word to monsieur when he is alone?”

Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a certain fact.  La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he turned his head in a manner to conceal his features.  Instead therefore of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard herself greeted in a very surprising manner.