h a
suspicious look, "for Samanon is after me."

"We have not paid up the arrears yet; your son still owes a hundred
thousand francs."

"Poor boy!"

"And your pension will not be free before seven or eight months.--If
you will wait a minute, I have two thousand francs here."

The Baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.

"Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where
to go."

"But you will tell me, old wretch?"

"Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a
little angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be
depraved."

"Do not forget the police-court," said Lisbeth, who flattered herself
that she would some day see Hulot there.

"No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the Baron, "a part of the
town where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me
there. I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a
retired cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my
back to be shorn any more."

"No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his coat.
"Supposing I take you there."

Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without
taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had
finished.

In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing
but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base
passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs
in his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the
door of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.

"Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send
none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from
different parts."

"Trust me! Oh, I am really very lucky!" said the Baron, his face
beaming with the prospect of new and future happiness.

"No one can find him there," said Lisbeth; and she paid the coach at
the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the Rue Louis-le-Grand in
the omnibus.

On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour when all the
family were together in the drawing-room, just after breakfast.
Celestine flew to throw her arms round her father's neck, and behaved
as if she had seen him only the day before, though in fact he had not
called there for more than two years.

"Good-morning, father," said Victorin, offering his hand.

"Good-morning, children," said the pompous Crevel. "Madame la Baro