I did not stay long with the little baron; he is a man wholly occupied in frivolous pleasures; and there was nothing to be gathered there that was worthy of a report to you.  I have found another place, where I have already witnessed several thing which fit into the mission that Madame de Godollo gave me, and therefore, thinking them likely to interest you, I hasten to bring them to your knowledge.  The household in which I am now employed is that of an old savant, named Monsieur Picot, who lives on a first floor, Place de la Madeleine, in the house and apartment formerly occupied by my late masters, the Thuilliers—­

“What!” cried la Peyrade, interrupting his reading, “Pere Picot, that ruined old lunatic, occupying such an apartment as that?”

“Go on, go on!” said Corentin; “life is full of many strange things.  You’ll find the explanation farther along; for our correspondent—­it is the defect of those fellows to waste themselves on details—­is only too fond of dotting his i’s.”

La Peyrade read on:—­

The Thuilliers left this apartment some weeks ago to return to their Latin quarter.  Mademoiselle Brigitte never really liked our sphere; her total want of education made her ill at ease.  Just because I speak correctly, she was always calling me ‘the orator,’ and she could not endure Monsieur Pascal, her porter, because, being beadle in the church of the Madeleine, he had manners; she even found something to say against the dealers in the great market behind the church, where, of course, she bought her provisions; she complained that they gave themselves capable airs, merely because they are not so coarse-tongued as those of the Halle, and only laughed at her when she tried to beat them down.  She has leased the whole house to a certain Monsieur Cerizet (a very ugly man, with a nose all eaten away) for an annual rent of fifty-five thousand francs.  This tenant seems to know what he is about.  He has lately married an actress at one of the minor theatres, Mademoiselle Olympe Cardinal, and he was just about to occupy himself the first-floor apartment, where he proposed to establish his present business, namely, insurance for the “dots” of children, when Monsieur Picot, arriving from England with his wife, a very rich Englishwoman, saw the apartment and offered such a good price that Monsieur Cerizet felt constrained to take it.  That was the time when, by the help of M. Pascal, the porter, with whom I have been careful to maintain good relations, I entered the household of Monsieur Picot.

“Monsieur Picot married to a rich Englishwoman!” exclaimed la Peyrade, interrupting himself again; “but it is incomprehensible.”

“Go on, I tell you,” said Corentin; “you’ll comprehend it presently.”

  The fortune of my new master,

continued la Peyrade,