At six o’clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the Rue de la Perle; she was making a survey of the abode of her future adviser, Lawyer Fraisier.  The house was one of the old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited by small tradespeople and citizens with small means.  A cabinetmaker’s shop occupied almost the whole of the ground floor, as well as the little yard behind, which was covered with his workshops and warehouses; the small remaining space being taken up by the porter’s lodge and the passage entry in the middle.  The staircase walls were half rotten with damp and covered with saltpetre to such a degree that the house seemed to be stricken with leprosy.

Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter’s lodge, and there encountered one of the fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, and two small children, all housed in a room ten feet square, lighted from the yard at the back.  La Cibot mentioned her profession, named herself, and spoke of her house in the Rue de Normandie, and the two women were on cordial terms at once.  After a quarter of an hour spent in gossip while the shoemaker’s wife made breakfast ready for her husband and the children, Mme. Cibot turned the conversation to the subject of the lodgers, and spoke of the lawyer.

“I have come to see him on business,” she said.  “One of his friends, Dr. Poulain, recommended me to him.  Do you know Dr. Poulain?”

“I should think I do,” said the lady of the Rue de la Perle.  “He saved my little girl’s life when she had the croup.”

“He saved my life, too, madame.  What sort of a man is this M. Fraisier?”

“He is the sort of man, my dear lady, out of whom it is very difficult to get the postage-money at the end of the month.”

To a person of La Cibot’s intelligence this was enough.

“One may be poor and honest,” observed she.

“I am sure I hope so,” returned Fraisier’s portress.  “We are not rolling in coppers, let alone gold or silver; but we have not a farthing belonging to anybody else.”

This sort of talk sounded familiar to La Cibot.

“In short, one can trust him, child, eh?”

“Lord! when M. Fraisier means well by any one, there is not his like, so I have heard Mme. Florimond say.”

“And why didn’t she marry him when she owed her fortune to him?” La Cibot asked quickly.  “It is something for a little haberdasher, kept by an old man, to be a barrister’s wife—­”

“Why?—­” asked the portress, bringing Mme. Cibot out into the passage.  “Why?—­You are going to see him, are you not, madame?—­Very well, when you are in his office you will know why.”

From the state of the staircase, lighted by sash-windows on the side of the yard, it was pretty evident that the inmates of the house, with the exception of the landlord and M. Fraisier himself, were all workmen.  There were traces of various crafts in the deposit of mud upon the steps—­brass-filings, broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and esparto grass lay scattered about.  The walls of the upper stories were covered with apprentices’ ribald scrawls and caricatures.  The portress’ last remark had roused La Cibot’s curiosity; she decided, not unnaturally, that she would consult Dr. Poulain’s friend; but as for employing him, that must depend upon her impressions.