And the very cabs were not like the other cabs which one makes use of for ordinary purposes!  Certainly, the cabmen guessed.  She felt sure of it, by the very way they looked at her, and the eyes of these Paris cabmen are terrible!  When one remembers they are constantly remembering, in the Courts of Justices, after a lapse of several years, faces of criminals whom they have only driven once, in the middle of the night, from some street or other to a railway station, and that they have to do with almost as many passengers as there are hours in the day, and that their memory is good enough for them to declare:  “That is the man whom I took up in the Rues des Martyrs, and put down at the Lyons Railway Station, at 12 o’clock at night, on July 10, last year!” Is it not terrible when one risks what a young woman risks when she is going to meet her lover, and has to trust her reputation to the first cabman she meets?  In two years she had employed at least a hundred to a hundred and twenty in that drive to the Rue Miromesnil, reckoning only one a week, and they were so many witnesses, who might appear against her at a critical moment.

As soon as she was in the cab, she took another veil, which was as thick and dark as a domino mask, out of her pocket, and put it on.  That hid her face, but what about the rest, her dress, her bonnet, and her parasol?  They might be remarked; they might, in fact, have been seen already.  Oh!  I What misery she endured in this Rue de Miromesnil!  She thought that she recognized all the foot-passengers, the servants, everybody, and almost before the cab had stopped, she jumped out and ran past the porter who was standing outside his lodge.  He must know everything, everything!—­her address, her name, her husband’s profession—­everything, for those porters are the most cunning of policemen!  For two years she had intended to bribe him, to give him (to throw at him one day as she passed him) a hundred-franc bank-note, but she had never once dared to do it.  She was frightened!  What of?  She did not know!  Of his calling her back, if he did not understand?  Of a scandal?  Of a crowd on the stairs?  Of being arrested, perhaps?  To reach the Viscount’s door, she had only to ascend a half a flight of stairs, and it seemed to her as high as the tower of Saint Jacques’ Church.

As soon as she had reached the vestibule, she felt as if she were caught in a trap, and the slightest noise before or behind her, nearly made her faint.  It was impossible for her to go back, because of that porter who barred her retreat; and if anyone came down at that moment she would not dare to ring at Martelet’s door, but would pass it as if she had been going elsewhere!  She would have gone up, and up, and up!  She would have mounted forty flights of stairs!  Then, when everything would seem quiet again down below, she would run down, feeling terribly frightened, lest she would not recognize the lobby.