and Madame de Marelle rushed into the room, terrified and breathless,
stammering: "Did you hear?"

He pretended to know nothing. "No; what?"

"How they have insulted me."

"Who? Who?"

"The blackguards who live down below."

"But, surely not; what does it all mean, tell me?"

She began to sob, without being able to utter a word. He had to take off
her bonnet, undo her dress, lay her on the bed, moisten her forehead
with a wet towel. She was choking, and then when her emotion was
somewhat abated, all her wrathful indignation broke out. She wanted him
to go down at once, to thrash them, to kill them.

He repeated: "But they are only work-people, low creatures. Just
remember that it would lead to a police court, that you might be
recognized, arrested, ruined. One cannot lower one's self to have
anything to do with such people."

She passed on to another idea. "What shall we do now? For my part, I
cannot come here again."

He replied: "It is very simple; I will move."

She murmured: "Yes, but that will take some time." Then all at once she
framed a plan, and reassured, added softly: "No, listen, I know what to
do; let me act, do not trouble yourself about anything. I will send you
a telegram to-morrow morning."

She smiled now, delighted with her plan, which she would not reveal, and
indulged in a thousand follies. She was very agitated, however, as she
went downstairs, leaning with all her weight on her lover's arm, her
legs trembled so beneath her. They did not meet anyone, though.

As he usually got up late, he was still in bed the next day, when, about
eleven o'clock, the telegraph messenger brought him the promised
telegram. He opened it and read:

"Meet me at five; 127, Rue de Constantinople. Rooms hired by Madame
Duroy.--Clo."

At five o'clock to the minute he entered the doorkeeper's lodge of a
large furnished house, and asked: "It is here that Madame Duroy has
taken rooms, is it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you show me to them, if you please."

The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is
necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of
the long range of keys, said: "You are Monsieur Duroy?"

"Yes, certainly."

The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in
front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wall-paper
of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor
could be felt through it, h