manner in which we parted would not have allowed me to hope it."

"Ah ca!" said Cerizet; "you don't think I was angry with you for that,
do you? I pitied you, that was all. I saw you under the spell, and I
said to myself: 'Leave him to learn la Peyrade by experience.' I knew
very well that the day of justice would dawn for me, and before long,
too. La Peyrade is a man who doesn't make you wait for his questionable
proceedings."

"Allow me to say," remarked Thuillier, "that I do not consider the
rupture of the marriage we had proposed a questionable proceeding. The
matter was arranged, I may say, by mutual consent."

"And the trick he is going to play you by leaving the paper in the
lurch, and the debt he has saddled you with, what are they?"

"Monsieur Cerizet," continued Thuillier, still holding himself on
the reserve, "as I have said more than once to la Peyrade, no man is
indispensable; and if the editorship of my paper becomes vacant, I feel
confident that I shall at once meet with persons very eager to offer me
their services."

"Is it for me you say that?" asked Cerizet. "Well, you haven't hit the
nail; if you did me the honor to want my services it would be impossible
for me to grant them. I have long been disgusted with journalism. I let
la Peyrade, I hardly know why, persuade me to make this campaign with
you; it didn't turn out happily, and I have vowed to myself to have no
more to do with newspapers. It was about another matter altogether than
I came to speak to you."

"Ah!" said Thuillier.

"Yes," continued Cerizet, "remembering the business-like manner in which
you managed the affair of this house in which you do me the honor to
receive me, I thought I could not do better than to call your attention
to a matter of the same kind which I have just now in hand. But I
shall not do as la Peyrade did,--make a bargain for the hand of
your goddaughter, and profess great friendship and devotion to you
personally. This is purely business, and I expect to make my profit out
of it. Now, as I still desire to become the principal tenant of this
house,--the letting of which must be a care and a disappointment to
mademoiselle, for I saw as I came along that the shops were still
unrented,--I think that this lease to me, if you will make it, might
be reckoned in to my share of the profits. You see, monsieur, that the
object of my visit has nothing to do with the newspaper."

"What is this new affair?" said Brigitte;