ave seen many shameless performances in my life, but never
anything equal to this. Such offers to me, in my own house!"

"But, my dear colleague, I swear--"

"Show him out," said the advocate to the surly servant who entered the
room at that moment; and from the centre of his office, the door
remaining open, before the whole parlor, where the prayers had ceased,
he pursued Jansoulet,--who turned his back and hastened, mumbling
incoherently, toward the outer door--with these crushing words:

"You have insulted the honor of the whole Chamber in my person,
Monsieur. Our colleagues shall be informed of it this very day; and,
this additional offence being added to the others, you will learn to
your sorrow that Paris is not the Orient, and the human conscience is
not shamefully traded in and bartered here as it is there."

Thereupon, having driven the money-changer from the temple, the just man
closed his door, and approaching the green curtain, said in a tone which
sounded sweet as honey after his pretended anger:

"Was that about right, Baronne Marie?"

XXI.

THE SITTING.

That morning there was not, as usual, a grand breakfast-party at number
32 Place Vendome. So that about one o'clock you might have seen M.
Barreau's majestic paunch arrayed in white linen displaying itself at
the entrance to the porch, surrounded by four or five scullions in their
paper caps and as many grooms in Scotch caps,--an imposing group, which
gave the sumptuous mansion the appearance of a hostelry, where the whole
staff was taking a breath of fresh air between two arrivals. The
resemblance was made complete by the cab stopping in front of the door
and the driver lifting down an old-fashioned leather trunk, while a tall
old woman in a yellow cap, an erect figure with a little green shawl
over her shoulders, leaped lightly to the sidewalk, a basket on her arm,
and looked carefully at the number, then approached the group of
servants and asked if that was where M. Bernard Jansoulet lived.

"This is the place," was the reply. "But he isn't in."

"That's no matter," said the old woman, very naturally.

She returned to the driver, bade him put her trunk under the porch, and
paid him, at once replacing her purse in her pocket with a gesture that
said much for provincial distrust.

Since Jansoulet had been Deputy for Corsica, his servants had seen so
many strange, foreign-looking creatures alight at his door that they
were not great