under glass shades.  The study, where the three men seated themselves before a soft-coal fire, was the study of a lawyer just beginning to practise.  The furniture consisted of a desk, an armchair, little curtains of green silk at the windows, a green carpet, shelves for lawyer’s boxes, and a couch, above which hung an ivory Christ on a velvet background.  The bedroom, kitchen, and rest of the apartment looked out upon the courtyard.

“Well,” said Cerizet, “how are things going?  Are we getting on?”

“Yes,” replied Theodose.

“You must admit,” cried Dutocq, “that my idea was a famous one, in laying hold of that imbecile of a Thuillier?”

“Yes, but I’m not behindhand either,” exclaimed Cerizet.  “I have come now to show you a way to put the thumbscrews on the old maid and make her spin like a teetotum.  We mustn’t deceive ourselves; Mademoiselle Thuillier is the head and front of everything in this affair; if we get her on our side the town is won.  Let us say little, but that little to the point, as becomes strong men with each other.  Claparon, you know, is a fool; he’ll be all his life what he always was,—­a cat’s-paw.  Just now he is lending his name to a notary in Paris, who is concerned with a lot of contractors, and they are all—­notary and masons—­on the point of ruin.  Claparon is going headlong into it.  He never yet was bankrupt; but there’s a first time for everything.  He is hidden now in my hovel in the rue des Poules, where no one will ever find him.  He is desperate, and he hasn’t a penny.  Now, among the five or six houses built by these contractors, which have to be sold, there’s a jewel of a house, built of freestone, in the neighborhood of the Madeleine,—­a frontage laced like a melon, with beautiful carvings,—­but not being finished, it will have to be sold for what it will bring; certainly not more than a hundred thousand francs.  By spending twenty-five thousand francs upon it it could be let, undoubtedly, for ten thousand.  Make Mademoiselle Thuillier the proprietor of that house and you’ll win her love; she’ll believe that you can put such chances in her way every year.  There are two ways of getting hold of vain people:  flatter their vanity, or threaten them; and there are also two ways of managing misers:  fill their purse, or else attack it.  Now, this stroke of business, while it does good to Mademoiselle Thuillier, does good to us as well, and it would be a pity not to profit by the chance.”

“But why does the notary let it slip through his fingers?” asked Dutocq.

“The notary, my dear fellow!  Why, he’s the very one who saves us.  Forced to sell his practice, and utterly ruined besides, he reserved for himself this crumb of the cake.  Believing in the honesty of that idiot Claparon, he has asked him to find a dummy purchaser.  We’ll let him suppose that Mademoiselle Thuillier is a worthy soul who allows Claparon to use her name; they’ll both be fooled, Claparon and the notary too.