open the door at once, or I will force it!"

"No, you won't injure my house like that! But you want to see her, do
you? Very well, I will show her to you, then."

She quickly slid back a narrow panel in the door, which permitted him to
look into the room.

"Look in, gentlemen and ladies," said La Roulante, in the sing-song tone
of a showman at the circus, "look in, it won't cost you anything!" And
then the creature laughed.

Talizac did not heed her, but leaning toward the open panel looked at
Francine, who lay with her arms folded on her breast like a child. Her
hair was loosened, and nothing could have been lovelier than this face
with its delicate features, reminding one of Raphael's pictures. Talizac
looked, and forgot that this child was the victim of a miserable
conspiracy. He was so impressed by her beauty and her innocence that he
was ready to kneel before her. But La Roulante touched his arm with a
cynical laugh.

"Open the door, I say!"

La Roulante closed the panel with a snap, and slowly drew a key from her
pocket and stood with it in her fingers, and then said quietly and
firmly:

"If I unlock that door, it will cost you twenty thousand francs!"

Talizac started back. "What do you mean?" he exclaimed.

"Just what I say, twenty thousand francs!"

"But this is abominable. Have I not paid the sum agreed upon?"

"A trifle, yes; but that won't do!"

"It is robbery, bare-faced robbery--"

"None of that, sir, you are not so honest yourself, that you can afford
to taunt others!"

He looked at her in astonishment, and then rushed at the door as if to
force it open. She called for Robeccal, who hurried to obey her summons.
Talizac called Fernando, and Robeccal turned back. Drawing an enormous
knife, he said, fiercely:

"Don't you interfere! My wife will settle her own matters with this
gentleman!"

Fernando's attitude during the fight between Frederic and Montferrand
has already informed us as to the courage of this man. Perhaps he was
wise in not risking his life to defend Talizac, whom he estimated at his
proper value. He was interested in the Fongereues family only as an
emissary of that Society which at that time labored to strangle
Liberalism at its birth.

"Very good!" answered Fernando, shrugging his shoulders indifferently,
but as he did not propose to be mixed up in any disagreeable affair in
this house, he determined to take himself off.

The giantess was not alarmed by Talizac's ma