n ace of yielding to the
evil prompting that bid him fling Crevel into the river and throw
himself in after.

On reaching the Rue du Dauphin, which had not yet been widened, Crevel
stopped before a door in a wall. It opened into a long corridor paved
with black-and-white marble, and serving as an entrance-hall, at the
end of which there was a flight of stairs and a doorkeeper's lodge,
lighted from an inner courtyard, as is often the case in Paris. This
courtyard, which was shared with another house, was oddly divided into
two unequal portions. Crevel's little house, for he owned it, had
additional rooms with a glass skylight, built out on to the adjoining
plot, under conditions that it should have no story added above the
ground floor, so that the structure was entirely hidden by the lodge
and the projecting mass of the staircase.

This back building had long served as a store-room, backshop, and
kitchen to one of the shops facing the street. Crevel had cut off
these three rooms from the rest of the ground floor, and Grindot had
transformed them into an inexpensive private residence. There were two
ways in--from the front, through the shop of a furniture-dealer, to
whom Crevel let it at a low price, and only from month to month, so as
to be able to get rid of him in case of his telling tales, and also
through a door in the wall of the passage, so ingeniously hidden as to
be almost invisible. The little apartment, comprising a dining-room,
drawing-room, and bedroom, all lighted from above, and standing partly
on Crevel's ground and partly on his neighbor's, was very difficult to
find. With the exception of the second-hand furniture-dealer, the
tenants knew nothing of the existence of this little paradise.

The doorkeeper, paid to keep Crevel's secrets, was a capital cook. So
Monsieur le Maire could go in and out of his inexpensive retreat at
any hour of the night without any fear of being spied upon. By day, a
lady, dressed as Paris women dress to go shopping, and having a key,
ran no risk in coming to Crevel's lodgings; she would stop to look at
the cheapened goods, ask the price, go into the shop, and come out
again, without exciting the smallest suspicion if any one should
happen to meet her.

As soon as Crevel had lighted the candles in the sitting-room, the
Baron was surprised at the elegance and refinement it displayed. The
perfumer had given the architect a free hand, and Grindot had done
himself credit by fi