“’DEAR OLD CHAP,—­I have pitched my tent in the Rue Chauchat.  I have taken the precaution of getting a few friends to clean up the paint.  All is well.  Come when you please, monsieur; Hagar awaits her Abraham.’

“Heloise will have some news for me, for she has her bohemia at her fingers’ end.”

“But Monsieur Hulot took the disaster very calmly,” said Lisbeth.

“Impossible!” cried Crevel, stopping in a parade as regular as the swing of a pendulum.

“Monsieur Hulot is not as young as he was,” Lisbeth remarked significantly.

“I know that,” said Crevel, “but in one point we are alike:  Hulot cannot do without an attachment.  He is capable of going back to his wife.  It would be a novelty for him, but an end to my vengeance.  You smile, Mademoiselle Fischer—­ah! perhaps you know something?”

“I am smiling at your notions,” replied Lisbeth.  “Yes, my cousin is still handsome enough to inspire a passion.  I should certainly fall in love with her if I were a man.”

“Cut and come again!” exclaimed Crevel.  “You are laughing at me.—­The Baron has already found consolation?”

Lisbeth bowed affirmatively.

“He is a lucky man if he can find a second Josepha within twenty-four hours!” said Crevel.  “But I am not altogether surprised, for he told me one evening at supper that when he was a young man he always had three mistresses on hand that he might not be left high and dry—­the one he was giving over, the one in possession, and the one he was courting for a future emergency.  He had some smart little work-woman in reserve, no doubt—­in his fish-pond—­his Parc-aux-cerfs!  He is very Louis XV., is my gentleman.  He is in luck to be so handsome!  —­However, he is ageing; his face shows it.—­He has taken up with some little milliner?”

“Dear me, no,” replied Lisbeth.

“Oh!” cried Crevel, “what would I not do to hinder him from hanging up his hat!  I could not win back Josepha; women of that kind never come back to their first love.—­Besides, it is truly said, such a return is not love.—­But, Cousin Betty, I would pay down fifty thousand francs —­that is to say, I would spend it—­to rob that great good-looking fellow of his mistress, and to show him that a Major with a portly stomach and a brain made to become Mayor of Paris, though he is a grandfather, is not to have his mistress tickled away by a poacher without turning the tables.”

“My position,” said Lisbeth, “compels me to hear everything and know nothing.  You may talk to me without fear; I never repeat a word of what any one may choose to tell me.  How can you suppose I should ever break that rule of conduct?  No one would ever trust me again.”

“I know,” said Crevel; “you are the very jewel of old maids.  Still, come, there are exceptions.  Look here, the family have never settled an allowance on you?”

“But I have my pride,” said Lisbeth.  “I do not choose to be an expense to anybody.”