tice-of-peace of the 12th arrondissement. He crossed the first room,
in which were a crowd of persons whom civil suits of one kind or another
summoned before the magistrate. Without pausing in that waiting-room, la
Peyrade pushed on to the office adjoining that of Dutocq. There he found
Cerizet at a shabby desk of blackened wood, at which another clerk, then
absent, occupied the opposite seat.

Seeing his visitor, Cerizet cast a savage look at him and said, without
rising, or suspending the copy of the judgment he was then engrossing:--

"You here, Sieur la Peyrade? You have been doing fine things for your
friend Thuillier!"

"How are you?" asked la Peyrade, in a tone both resolute and friendly.

"I?" replied Cerizet. "As you see, still rowing my galley; and, to
follow out the nautical metaphor, allow me to ask what wind has blown
you hither; is it, perchance, the wind of adversity?"

La Peyrade, without replying, took a chair beside his questioner, after
which he said in a grave tone:--

"My dear fellow, we have something to say to each other."

"I suppose," said Cerizet, spitefully, "the Thuilliers have grown cold
since the seizure of the pamphlet."

"The Thuilliers are ungrateful people; I have broken with them," replied
la Peyrade.

"Rupture or dismissal," said Cerizet, "their door is shut against you;
and from what Dutocq tells me, I judge that Brigitte is handling you
without gloves. You see, my friend, what it is to try and manage affairs
alone; complications come, and there's no one to smooth the angles.
If you had got me that lease, I should have had a footing at the
Thuilliers', Dutocq would not have abandoned you, and together we could
have brought you gently into port."

"But suppose I don't want to re-enter that port?" said la Peyrade, with
some sharpness. "I tell you I've had enough of those Thuilliers, and
I broke with them myself; I warned them to get out of my sun; and if
Dutocq told you anything else you may tell him from me that he lies. Is
that clear enough? It seems to me I've made it plain."

"Well, exactly, my good fellow, if you are so savage against your
Thuilliers you ought to have put me among them, and then you'd have seen
me avenge you."

"There you are right," said la Peyrade; "I wish I could have set you at
their legs--but as for that matter of the lease I tell you again, I was
not master of it."

"Of course," said Cerizet, "it was your conscience which obliged you to
tell