“Will you really go to Paris, then?” he said.

A flash of gayety lighted Suzanne’s gray eyes as she heard these words; but the self-satisfied du Bousquier saw nothing.

“Yes, monsieur,” she said.

Du Bousquier then began bitter lamentations:  he had the last payments to make on his house; the painter, the mason, the upholsterers must be paid.  Suzanne let him run on; she was listening for the figures.  Du Bousquier offered her three hundred francs.  Suzanne made what is called on the stage a false exit; that is, she marched toward the door.

“Stop, stop! where are you going?” said du Bousquier, uneasily.  “This is what comes of a bachelor’s life!” thought he.  “The devil take me if I ever did anything more than rumple her collar, and, lo and behold! she makes that a ground to put her hand in one’s pocket!”

“I’m going, monsieur,” replied Suzanne, “to Madame Granson, the treasurer of the Maternity Society, who, to my knowledge, has saved many a poor girl in my condition from suicide.”

“Madame Granson!”

“Yes,” said Suzanne, “a relation of Mademoiselle Cormon, the president of the Maternity Society.  Saving your presence, the ladies of the town have created an institution to protect poor creatures from destroying their infants, like that handsome Faustine of Argentan who was executed for it three years ago.”

“Here, Suzanne,” said du Bousquier, giving her a key, “open that secretary, and take out the bag you’ll find there:  there’s about six hundred francs in it; it is all I possess.”

“Old cheat!” thought Suzanne, doing as he told her, “I’ll tell about your false toupet.”

She compared du Bousquier with that charming chevalier, who had given her nothing, it is true, but who had comprehended her, advised her, and carried all grisettes in his heart.

“If you deceive me, Suzanne,” cried du Bousquier, as he saw her with her hand in the drawer, “you—­”

“Monsieur,” she said, interrupting him with ineffable impertinence, “wouldn’t you have given me money if I had asked for it?”

Recalled to a sense of gallantry, du Bousquier had a remembrance of past happiness and grunted his assent.  Suzanne took the bag and departed, after allowing the old bachelor to kiss her, which he did with an air that seemed to say, “It is a right which costs me dear; but it is better than being harried by a lawyer in the court of assizes as the seducer of a girl accused of infanticide.”

Suzanne hid the sack in a sort of gamebag made of osier which she had on her arm, all the while cursing du Bousquier for his stinginess; for one thousand francs was the sum she wanted.  Once tempted of the devil to desire that sum, a girl will go far when she has set foot on the path of trickery.  As she made her way along the rue du Bercail, it came into her head that the Maternity Society, presided over by Mademoiselle Cormon, might be induced to complete