“Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage, she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how I can manage to let her know.”  Delighted at having hit on a trick of which the success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune: 

“Larifla, fla, fla!—­And Didine once out of the way,” he went on, talking to himself, “I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a novelette:  I have seduced her Felicie at Saint-Eustache—­Felicie, guilty through passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection —­and larifla, fla, fla! the father Ergo, the notary, his wife, and his daughter are caught, nabbed——­”

And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a prohibited dance.

“Your arrival and our happiness have turned my head with joy,” said he, to explain this crazy mood.

“And I had fancied you had ceased to love me!” exclaimed the poor woman, dropping the handbag she was carrying, and weeping with joy as she sank into a chair.

“Make yourself at home, my darling,” said Etienne, laughing in his sleeve; “I must write two lines to excuse myself from a bachelor party, for I mean to devote myself to you.  Give your orders; you are at home.”

Etienne wrote to Bixiou: 

“MY DEAR BOY,—­My Baroness has dropped into my arms, and will be fatal to my marriage unless we perform one of the most familiar stratagems of the thousand and one comedies at the Gymnase.  I rely on you to come here, like one of Moliere’s old men, to scold your nephew Leandre for his folly, while the Tenth Muse lies hidden in my bedroom; you must work on her feelings; strike hard, be brutal, offensive.  I, you understand, shall express my blind devotion, and shall seem to be deaf, so that you may have to shout at me.

  “Come, if you can, at seven o’clock.

“Yours,
“E.  LOUSTEAU.”

Having sent this letter by a commissionaire to the man who, in all Paris, most delighted in such practical jokes—­in the slang of artists, a "charge"—­Lousteau made a great show of settling the Muse of Sancerre in his apartment.  He busied himself in arranging the luggage she had brought, and informed her as to the persons and ways of the house with such perfect good faith, and a glee which overflowed in kind words and caresses, that Dinah believed herself the best-beloved woman in the world.  These rooms, where everything bore the stamp of fashion, pleased her far better than her old chateau.

Pamela Migeon, the intelligent damsel of fourteen, was questioned by the journalist as to whether she would like to be waiting-maid to the imposing Baroness.  Pamela, perfectly enchanted, entered on her duties at once, by going off to order dinner from a restaurant on the boulevard.  Dinah was able to judge of the extreme poverty that lay hidden under the purely superficial elegance of this bachelor home when she found none of the necessaries of life.  As she took possession of the closets and drawers, she indulged in the fondest dreams; she would alter Etienne’s habits, she would make him home-keeping, she would fill his cup of domestic happiness.