g.'"

Godefroid bowed stiffly and went to his room.

"The devil take them!" he exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright
anger. "What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they
are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same
tricks. If Madame" (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of
her) "wants me out of the way it is probably because they are plotting
something against me."

With that thought in his mind he tried to look from his window into that
of the salon; but the situation of the rooms did not allow it. He went
down one flight, and then returned,--reflecting that according to the
rigid principles of the house he should be dismissed if discovered
spying. To lose the respect of those five persons seemed to him as
serious as public dishonor.

He waited three quarters of an hour; then he resolved to surprise Madame
de la Chanterie and come upon her suddenly before she expected him. He
invented a lie to excuse himself, saying that his watch was wrong; for
which purpose he set it on twenty minutes. Then he went downstairs,
making no noise, reached the door of the salon, and opened it abruptly.

He saw a man, still young, but already celebrated, a poet, whom he had
frequently met in society, Victor de Vernisset, on his knees before
Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem of her dress. If the sky had
fallen, and shivered to atoms like glass, as the ancients thought it
was, Godefroid could not have been more astonished. Shocking thoughts
came into his mind, and then a reaction more terrible still when, before
the sarcasm he was about to utter had left his lips, he saw Monsieur
Alain in a corner of the room counting out bank-notes.

In an instant Vernisset was on his feet, and the worthy Alain looked
thunderstruck. Madame de la Chanterie, on her part, gave Godefroid a
look which petrified him; for the twofold expression on the face of the
visitor had not escaped him.

"Monsieur is one of us," she said to the young poet, with a sign towards
Godefroid.

"Then you are a happy man, my dear fellow," said Vernisset; "you are
saved! But, madame," he added, turning to Madame de la Chanterie, "if
all Paris had seen me, I should rejoice in it. Nothing can ever mark my
gratitude to you. I am yours forever; I belong to you utterly. Command
me as you will and I obey. I owe you my life, and it is yours."

"Well, well, young man!" said the kind Alain, "then be wise, be
virtu