This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, its pangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a few words, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper, influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour.  He asked himself whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of Madame Jules, and that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance, the mere necessity of a charitable effort.  But could that old pauper have seduced this Ida?  There was something impossible in the very idea.  Wandering in this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed, recrossed, and obliterated one another, the baron reached the rue Pagevin, and saw a hackney-coach standing at the end of the rue des Vieux-Augustins where it enters the rue Montmartre.  All waiting hackney-coaches now had an interest for him.

“Can she be there?” he thought to himself, and his heart beat fast with a hot and feverish throbbing.

He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as he did so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:—­

“Why are you putting your foot into this mystery?”

He went up a few steps, and found himself face to face with the old portress.

“Monsieur Ferragus?” he said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Doesn’t Monsieur Ferragus live here?”

“Haven’t such a name in the house.”

“But, my good woman—­”

“I’m not your good woman, monsieur, I’m the portress.”

“But, madame,” persisted the baron, “I have a letter for Monsieur Ferragus.”

“Ah! if monsieur has a letter,” she said, changing her tone, “that’s another matter.  Will you let me see it—­that letter?”

Auguste showed the folded letter.  The old woman shook her head with a doubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and inform the mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said:—­

“Very good; go up, monsieur.  I suppose you know the way?”

Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, the young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door of the second floor.  His lover’s instinct told him, “She is there.”

The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the “orther” of Ida’s woes, opened the door himself.  He appeared in a flowered dressing-gown, white flannel trousers, his feet in embroidered slippers, and his face washed clean of stains.  Madame Jules, whose head projected beyond the casing of the door in the next room, turned pale and dropped into a chair.

“What is the matter, madame?” cried the officer, springing toward her.

But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back with so sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with an iron bar full on his chest.

“Back! monsieur,” said the man.  “What do you want there?  For five or six days you have been roaming about the neighborhood.  Are you a spy?”