" said Cerizet, "that you are making yourself out much
poorer than you are; and if friend Peyrade here, who seems to be more
in your confidence, hadn't his tongue tied by the rules of his
profession--"

"I!" said la Peyrade, hastily, "I don't know anything of madame's
affairs. She asked me to draw up a petition on a matter in which there
was nothing judicial or financial."

"Ah! that's it, is it?" said Cerizet. "Madame had doubtless gone to
see you about this petition the day Dutocq met her at your office, the
morning after our dinner at the Rocher de Cancale--when you were such a
Roman, you know."

Then, without seeming to attach any importance to the reminiscence, he
added:--

"Well, my good Madame Lambert, I'll ask my patron to speak to the
justice-of-peace, and, if I get a chance, I'll speak to him myself; but,
I repeat it, he is very much prejudiced against you."

Madame Lambert retired with many curtseys and protestations of
gratitude. When she was fairly gone la Peyrade remarked:--

"You don't seem to believe that that woman came to me about a petition;
and yet nothing was ever truer. She is thought a saint in the street she
lives in, and that old man they accuse her of robbing is actually kept
alive by her devotion, so I'm told. Consequently, the neighbors have put
it into the good woman's head to apply for the Montyon prize; and it was
for the purpose of putting her claims in legal shape that she applied to
me."

"Dear! dear! the Montyon prize!" cried Cerizet; "well, that's an idea!
My good fellow, we ought to have cultivated it before,--I, especially,
as banker of the poor, and you, their advocate. As for this client of
yours, it is lucky for her Monsieur Picot's relatives are not members
of the French academy; it is in the correctional police-court, sixth
chamber, where they mean to give her the reward of virtue. However, to
come back to what we were talking about. I tell you that after all your
tergiversations you had better settle down peaceably; and I advise you,
as your countess did, to go and see du Portail."

"Who and what is he?" asked la Peyrade.

"He is a little old man," replied Cerizet, "as shrewd as a weasel. He
gives me the idea of having dealings with the devil. Go and see him!
Sight, as they say, costs nothing."

"Yes," said la Peyrade, "perhaps I will; but, first of all, I want you
to find out for me about this Comtesse de Godollo."

"What do you care about her? She is nothing bu