as
picked up, and as everybody knew his inveterate drinking habits, no one
thought of instituting an inquiry, or of accusing me of a crime, and
thus I was avenged, and had a yearly income of nearly fifteen thousand
francs. What, after all, is the good of being honest, and of pardoning
our enemies, as the Gospel bids us?'

"And now," Louis d'Arandal said in conclusion, "suppose we go and have a
cocktail or two at the Casino, for I do not think that I have ever
talked so much in my life before."

MADAME TELLIER'S ESTABLISHMENT

PART I

They used to go there every evening at about eleven o'clock, just like
they went to the _cafe_. Six or eight of them used to meet there; they
were always the same set, not fast men, but respectable tradesmen, and
young men, in government or some other employ, and they used to drink
their Chartreuse, and tease the girls, or else they would talk seriously
with _Madame_, whom everybody respected, and then they used to go home
at twelve o'clock. The younger men would sometimes stay the night.

It was a small, comfortable house, at the corner of a street behind
Saint Etienne's church, and from the windows one could see the docks,
full of ships which were being unloaded, and the old, gray chapel,
dedicated to the Virgin, on the hill.

_Madame_, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors in the
department of the Eure, had taken up that profession, just as she would
have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice against
prostitution, which is so violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does
not exist in the country places in Normandy. The peasant says:

"It is a paying business," and he sends his daughter to keep a harem of
fast girls, just as he would send her to keep a girls' school.

She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged.
_Monsieur_ and _Madame_, who had formerly been inn-keepers near Yvetot,
had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the business at
Fecamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning to assume
the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account of the
absence of the proprietors, who were good people enough in their way,
and who soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbors.

_Monsieur_ died of apoplexy two years later, for as his new profession
kept him in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively
stout, and his health had suffered. Since she