e by Madame de Godollo, some brutal
insolence of the old maid had necessitated this abrupt departure. But
why had he not been told of it? And what an idea, to expose him to
this ridiculous meeting with what the common people call, in their
picturesque language, "the wooden face"!

Before leaving the door finally, and as if some doubt still remained in
his mind, la Peyrade made a last and most thundering assault upon it.

"Who's knocking like that, as if they'd bring the house down?" said the
porter, attracted by the noise to the foot of the staircase.

"Doesn't Madame de Godollo still live here?" asked la Peyrade.

"Of course she doesn't live here now; she has moved away. If monsieur
had told me he was going to her apartment I would have spared him the
trouble of battering down the door."

"I knew that she was going to leave the apartment," said la Peyrade, not
wishing to seem ignorant of the project of departure, "but I had no idea
she was going so soon."

"I suppose it was something sudden," said the porter, "for she went off
early this morning with post-horses."

"Post-horses!" echoed la Peyrade, stupefied. "Then she has left Paris?"

"That's to be supposed," said the porter; "people don't usually take
post-horses and a postilion to change from one quarter of Paris to
another."

"And she did not tell you where she was going?"

"Ah! monsieur, what an idea! Do people account to us porters for what
they do?"

"No, but her letters--those that come after her departure?"

"Her letters? I am ordered to deliver them to Monsieur le commandeur,
the little old gentlemen who came to see her so often; monsieur must
have met him."

"Yes, yes, certainly," said la Peyrade, keeping his presence of mind in
the midst of the successive shocks which came upon him,--"the powered
little man who was here every day."

"I couldn't say every day; but he came often. Well, I am told to give
the countess's letters to him."

"And for other persons of her acquaintance," said la Peyrade,
carelessly, "did she leave no message?"

"None, monsieur."

"Very well," said la Peyrade, "good-morning." And he turned to go out.

"But I think," said the porter, "that Mademoiselle Thuillier knows more
about it than I do. Won't monsieur go up? She is at home; and so is
Monsieur Thuillier."

"No, never mind," said la Peyrade, "I only came to tell Madame de
Godollo about a commission she asked me to execute; I haven't time to
stop now."

"