brown paletot, with black velvet cuffs,
showing his hands covered with thin coloured kid gloves, and his boots
bore evidence of having been on the previous evening highly polished.

It was M. Badinot, the independent lady's uncle, that Madame
Saint-Ildefonse, whose social position formed the pride and security of
Pere Micou. The reader may, perchance, recollect that M. Badinot, the
former attorney, struck off that respectable list, then a Chevalier
d'Industrie, and agent in equivocal matters, was the spy of Baron de
Grauen, and had given that diplomatist many and very precise particulars
as to many personages connected with this tale.

"Madame Charles has just given you a letter to send?" said M. Badinot,
to the dealer in _et ceteras_.

"Yes, sir; my nephew I expect every moment, and he shall go directly."

"No, give me the letter again, I have changed my mind. I shall go myself
to the Comte de Saint-Remy," said M. Badinot, pronouncing this
aristocratic name very emphatically, and with much importance.

"Here's the letter, sir; have you any other commission?"

"No, Pere Micou," said M. Badinot, with a protecting air, "but I have
something to scold you about."

"Me, sir?"

"Very much, indeed."

"About what, sir?"

"Why, Madame de Saint-Ildefonse pays very expensively for your first
floor. My niece is a lodger to whom the greatest respect ought to be
paid; she came highly recommended to your house, and, having a great
aversion to the noise of carriages, she hoped she should be here as if
she were in the country."

"So she is; it is quite like a village here. You ought to know,
sir,--you who live in the country,--this is a real village."

"A village! Very like, indeed! Why, there is always such an infernal din
in the house."

"Still, it is impossible to find a quieter house. Above the lady, there
is the leader of the band at the Cafe des Aveugles, and a gentleman
traveller; over that, another traveller; over that--"

"I am not alluding to those persons; they are very quiet, and appear
very respectable. My niece has no fault to find with them; but in the
fourth, there is a stout lame man, whom Madame de Saint-Ildefonse met
yesterday tipsy on the stairs; he was shrieking like a savage, and she
nearly had a fit, she was so much alarmed. If you think that, with such
lodgers, your house resembles a village--"

"Sir, I assure you I only wait the opportunity to turn this stout lame
man out-of-doors; he has paid