, "tell me seriously, you are not going
to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard's debts? It would really
trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid,
he's nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension!
How'll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he
owes three thousand francs?"

"To whom?" inquired Godefroid.

"Oh! to whom? that's not my affair," said the widow, mysteriously; "it
is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I'll tell you this:
somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can't get a
penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account."

"Three thousand francs!" repeated Godefroid; "oh, you needn't be afraid
I'll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I
shouldn't be your lodger. But I can't bear to see others suffer, and
just for a hundred or so of francs I sha'n't let my neighbor, a man with
white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much
as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you
thinking of?"

Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid's apparent frankness, let a smile
of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her
lodger's suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an
accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old
man.

"It is strange, monsieur," she went on, "what fancies one takes into
one's head! You'll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you
talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk
of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher's quarter. I once
lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his
name was the same as yours--"

"What does my business signify to you?" interrupted Godefroid.

"Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn't tell me; I shall know it all
the same," retorted Vauthier. "There's Monsieur Bernard, for instance,
for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the
nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere
or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What
did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I'd have said
nothing about it--so there!"

"I am not yet a publisher's clerk, but I expect to be," said Godefroid.

"I thought so!" exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed
she had been making as a pret