“Come now, stop that nonsense!  You know very well what you are about.  Instead of a heart, you have a great big double zero, just like a Homburg.  When you took a fancy to me, you said to yourself, ’I will expend so much on passion,’ and you have kept your word.  It is an investment, like any other, in which one receives interest in the form of pleasure.  You are capable of all the extravagance in the world, to the extent of your fixed price of four thousand francs a month!  If it required a franc more you would very soon take back your heart and your hat, and carry them elsewhere; to one or other of my rivals in the neighborhood.”

“It is true,” answered the advocate, coolly.  “I know how to count, and that accomplishment is very useful to me.  It enables me to know exactly how and where I have got rid of my fortune.”

“So you really know?” sneered Juliette.

“And I can tell you, madam,” continued he.  “At first you were not very exacting, but the appetite came with eating.  You wished for luxury, you have it; splendid furniture, you have it; a complete establishment, extravagant dresses, I could refuse you nothing.  You required a carriage, a horse, I gave them you.  And I do not mention a thousand other whims.  I include neither this Chinese cabinet nor the two dozen bracelets.  The total is four hundred thousand francs!”

“Are you sure?”

“As one can be who has had that amount, and has it no longer.”

“Four hundred thousand francs, only fancy!  Are there no centimes?”

“No.”

“Then, my dear friend, if I make up my bill, you will still owe me something.”

The entrance of the maid with the tea-tray interrupted this amorous duet, of which Noel had experienced more than one repetition.  The advocate held his tongue on account of the servant.  Juliette did the same on account of her lover, for she had no secrets from Charlotte, who had been with her three years, and with whom she had shared everything, sometimes even her lovers.

Madame Juliette Chaffour was a Parisienne.  She was born about 1839, somewhere in the upper end of the Faubourg Montmarte.  Her father was unknown.  Her infancy was a long alternation of beatings and caresses, equally furious.  She had lived as best she could, on sweetmeats and damaged fruit; so that now her stomach could stand anything.  At twelve years old she was as thin as a nail, as green as a June apple, and more depraved than the inmates of the prison of St. Lazare.  Prudhomme would have said that this precocious little hussy was totally destitute of morality.  She had not the slightest idea what morality was.  She thought the world was full of honest people living like her mother, and her mother’s friends.  She feared neither God nor devil, but she was afraid of the police.  She dreaded also certain mysterious and cruel persons, whom she had heard spoken of, who dwell near the Palais de Justice, and who experience a malicious pleasure