nd them at dinner, making the most of the
Beauvisage funds, and he gave them an order to come to his apartment the
next day at half-past eleven without breakfasting.

In the evening he found Massol, as he expected, at the opera-house.
Going up to the lawyer with the slightly insolent manner which was
natural to him, he said,--

"Monsieur, I have an affair, half legal, half political, which I desire
to talk over with you. If it did not demand a certain amount of secrecy,
I would go to your office, but I think we could talk with more safety
in my own apartment; where, moreover, I shall be able to put you in
communication with other persons concerned in the affair. May I hope
that to-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock, you will do me the favor to
take a cup of tea with me?"

If Massol had had an office, he might possibly not have consented, for
the sake of his legal dignity, to reverse the usual order of things; but
as he perched rather than lodged in any particular place, he was glad of
an arrangement which left his abode, if he had any, incognito.

"I shall have the honor to be with you at the hour named," he replied
ceremoniously.

"Rue Pigalle," said Maxime, "No. 6."

"Yes, I know," returned Massol,--"a few steps from the corner of the rue
de la Rochefoucauld."

VIII. SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES

A few evenings after the one on which Sallenauve and Marie-Gaston had
taken Jacques Bricheteau to Saint-Sulpice to hear the Signora Luigia's
voice, the church was the scene of a curious little incident that
passed by almost wholly unperceived. A young man entered hastily by a
side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he
forgot to remove his hat. The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face
became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were
causeless.

"Is your hat glued on your head, young man?" said the beadle, pompously.

"Oh, pardon me, monsieur," he replied, snatching it off; "I forgot
myself."

Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.

A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave
access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a
white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white but
slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave him
very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
who had had the small-pox. His face and his hair placed h