ry, bowed stiffly to the lady, and went to find
his spencer. Now, it so happened that the door of Cecile's bedroom,
beyond the little drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the
mirror, he caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she
gesticulated and made signs to her mother. The old artist understood
beyond a doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons
went slowly down the stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He
understood that he had been turned out of the house, but why and
wherefore he did not know.

"I am growing too old," he told himself. "The world has a horror of
old age and poverty--two ugly things. After this I will not go
anywhere unless I am asked."

Heroic resolve!

Downstairs the great gate was shut, as it usually is in houses
occupied by the proprietor; the kitchen stood exactly opposite the
porter's lodge, and the door was open. Pons was obliged to listen
while Madeleine told the servants the whole story amid the laughter of
the servants. She had not expected him to leave so soon. The footman
loudly applauded a joke at the expense of a visitor who was always
coming to the house and never gave you more than three francs at the
year's end.

"Yes," put in the cook; "but if he cuts up rough and does not come
back, there will be three francs the less for some of us on New Year's
day."

"Eh! How is he to know?" retorted the footman.

"Pooh!" said Madeleine, "a little sooner or a little later--what
difference does it make? The people at the other houses where he dines
are so tired of him that they are going to turn him out."

"The gate, if you please!"

Madeleine had scarcely uttered the words when they heard the old
musician's call to the porter. It sounded like a cry of pain. There
was a sudden silence in the kitchen.

"He heard!" the footman said.

"Well, and if he did, so much the worser, or rather so much the
better," retorted Madeleine. "He is an arrant skinflint."

Poor Pons had lost none of the talk in the kitchen; he heard it all,
even to the last word. He made his way home along the boulevards, in
the same state, physical and mental, as an old woman after a desperate
struggle with burglars. As he went he talked to himself in quick
spasmodic jerks; his honor had been wounded, and the pain of it drove
him on as a gust of wind whirls away a straw. He found himself at last
in the Boulevard du Temple; how he had come thither he could not tell.
It was five