“Ah, here you are, monsieur!” said Madame Vauthier.  “If I had known you were coming home so early I would have made your fire.”

“I don’t want one,” said Godefroid, seeing that the widow followed him.  “I shall spend the evening in Monsieur Bernard’s apartment.”

“Well, well! you must be his cousin, if you are hand and glove like that!  Perhaps monsieur will finish now the little conversation we began.”

“Ah, yes!—­about that four hundred francs.  Look here, my good Madame Vauthier, you are trying to see which way the cat jumps, and you’ll tumble yourself between two stools.  As for me, you have betrayed me, and made me miss the whole affair.”

“Now, don’t think that, my dear monsieur.  To-morrow, while you breakfast—­”

“To-morrow I shall not breakfast here.  I am going out, like your authors, at cock-crow.”

Godefroid’s antecedents, his life as a man of the world and a journalist, served him in this, that he felt quite sure, unless he took this tone, that Barbet’s spy would warn the old publisher of danger, and probably lead to active measures under which Monsieur Bernard would before long be arrested; whereas, if he left the trio of harpies to suppose that their scheme ran no risk of defeat, they would keep quiet.

But Godefroid did not yet know Parisian human nature when embodied in a Vauthier.  That woman resolved to have Godefroid’s money and Barbet’s too.  She instantly ran off to her proprietor, while Godefroid changed his clothes in order to present himself properly before the daughter of Monsieur Bernard.

XV

AN EVENING WITH VANDA

Eight o’clock was striking from the convent of the Visitation, the clock of the quarter, when the inquisitive Godefroid tapped gently at his neighbor’s door.  Auguste opened it.  As it happened to be a Saturday, the young lad had his evening to himself.  Godefroid beheld him in a little sack-coat of black velvet, a blue silk cravat, and black trousers.  But his surprise at the youth’s appearance, so different from that of this outside life, ceased as soon as he had entered the invalid’s chamber.  He then understood the reason why both father and son were well dressed.

For a moment the contrast between the squalor of the other rooms, as he had seen them that morning, and the luxury of this chamber, was so great that Godefroid was dazzled, though habituated for years to the luxury and elegance procured by wealth.

The walls of the room were hung with yellow silk, relieved by twisted fringes of a bright green, giving a gay and cheerful aspect to the chamber, the cold tiled floor of which was hidden by a moquette carpet with a white ground strewn with flowers.  The windows, draped by handsome curtains lined with white silk, were like conservatories, so full were they of plants in flower.  The blinds were lowered, which prevented this luxury, so rare in that quarter of the town, from being seen from the street.  The woodwork was painted in white enamel, touched up, here and there, by a few gold lines.