e law permits a notary to
receive. Trognon went out and came upon Mme. Cibot in the salon.

"Well, sir, did M. Pons remember me?"

"You do not expect a notary to betray secrets confided to him, my dear,"
returned M. Trognon. "I can only tell you this--there will be many
disappointments, and some that are anxious after the money will be
foiled. M. Pons has made a good and very sensible will, a patriotic
will, which I highly approve."

La Cibot's curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable
pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot's bedside,
inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards
two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the
document.

Mlle. Brisetout's visit towards half-past ten that night seemed natural
enough to La Cibot; but in her terror lest the ballet-girl should
mention Gaudissart's gift of a thousand francs, she went upstairs with
her, lavishing polite speeches and flattery as if Mlle. Heloise had been
a queen.

"Ah! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own ground than at the
theatre," Heloise remarked. "I advise you to keep to your employment."

Heloise was splendidly dressed. Bixiou, her lover, had brought her in
his carriage on the way to an evening party at Mariette's. It so
fell out that the first-floor lodger, M. Chapoulot, a retired braid
manufacturer from the Rue Saint-Denis, returning from the Ambigu-Comique
with his wife and daughter, was dazzled by a vision of such a costume
and such a charming woman upon their staircase.

"Who is that, Mme. Cibot?" asked Mme. Chapoulot.

"A no-better-than-she-should-be, a light-skirts that you may see
half-naked any evening for a couple of francs," La Cibot answered in an
undertone for Mme. Chapoulot's ear.

"Victorine!" called the braid manufacturer's wife, "let the lady pass,
child."

The matron's alarm signal was not lost upon Heloise.

"Your daughter must be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are
afraid that she will catch fire by touching me," she said.

M. Chapoulot waited on the landing. "She is uncommonly handsome off the
stage," he remarked. Whereupon Mme. Chapoulot pinched him sharply and
drove him indoors.

"Here is a second-floor lodger that has a mind to set up for being on
the fourth floor," said Heloise as she continued to climb.

"But mademoiselle is accustomed to going higher and higher."

"Well, old boy," said Heloise, entering the