em
pocket the gold with feverish impatience.

"Much obliged to you!" snarled the doorkeeper. "Fifty francs for having
coddled him up with tisane and broth! The old deceiver told me he had no
relatives!"

Before locking the wardrobe up again, Madame Lecoeur searched it
thoroughly from top to bottom. It contained all the political works
which were forbidden admission into the country, the pamphlets printed
at Brussels, the scandalous histories of the Bonapartes, and the foreign
caricatures ridiculing the Emperor. One of Gavard's greatest
delights was to shut himself up with a friend, and show him all these
compromising things.

"He told me that I was to burn all the papers," said La Sarriette.

"Oh, nonsense! we've no fire, and it would take up too long. The police
will soon be here! We must get out of this!"

They all four hastened off; but they had not reached the bottom of the
stairs before the police met them, and made Madame Leonce return with
them upstairs. The three others, making themselves as small as possible,
hurriedly escaped into the street. They walked away in single file at a
brisk pace; the aunt and niece considerably incommoded by the weight of
their drooping pockets. Mademoiselle Saget had kept her fifty francs in
her closed fist, and remained deep in thought, brooding over a plan for
extracting something more from the heavy pockets in front of her.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, as they reached the corner of the fish market,
"we've got here at a lucky moment. There's Florent yonder, just going to
walk into the trap."

Florent, indeed, was just then returning to the markets after his
prolonged perambulation. He went into his office to change his coat,
and then set about his daily duties, seeing that the marble slabs were
properly washed, and slowly strolling along the alleys. He fancied that
the fish-wives looked at him in a somewhat strange manner; they chuckled
too, and smiled significantly as he passed them. Some new vexation, he
thought, was in store for him. For some time past those huge, terrible
women had not allowed him a day's peace. However, as he passed the
Mehudins' stall he was very much surprised to hear the old woman address
him in a honeyed tone: "There's just been a gentleman inquiring for you,
Monsieur Florent; a middle-aged gentleman. He's gone to wait for you in
your room."

As the old fish-wife, who was squatting, all of a heap, on her chair,
spoke these words, she felt such a delic