the Prince the generous Zilah of former times, full
of pity, and ready to forgive an injury.

Andras could not meet Jacquemin that day, unless he waited for him at
the office of 'L'Actualite' until the races were over, and he therefore
postponed his intended interview until the next day.

About eleven o'clock in the morning, after a sleepless night, he
sought-the Rue Rochechouart, and the house Fremin had described to him.
It was there: an old weather-beaten house, with a narrow entrance and a
corridor, in the middle of which flowed a dirty, foul-smelling stream of
water; the room of the concierge looked like a black hole at the foot of
the staircase, the balusters and walls of which were wet with moisture
and streaked with dirt; a house of poor working-people, many stories
high, and built in the time when this quarter of Paris was almost a
suburb.

Andras hesitated at first to enter, thinking that he must be mistaken.
He thought of little Jacquemin, dainty and neat as if he had just
stepped out of a bandbox, and his disdainful remarks upon the races of
Enghien, where the swells no longer went. It was not possible that he
lived here in this wretched, shabby place.

The concierge replied to the Prince, however, when he asked for
Jacquemin: "Yes, Monsieur, on the fifth floor, the door to the right;"
and Zilah mounted the dark stairs.

When he reached the fifth floor, he did not yet believe it possible that
the Jacquemin who lived there was the one he had seen the day before,
the one whom Baroness Dinati petted, "our witty colleague Jacquemin."

He knocked, however, at the door on the right, as he had been directed.
No one came to open it; but he could hear within footsteps and
indistinct cries. He then perceived that there was a bell-rope, and he
pulled it. Immediately he heard some one approaching from within.

He felt a singular sensation of concentrated anger, united to a fear
that the Jacquemin he was in search of was not there.

The door opened, and a woman appeared, young, rather pale, with pretty
blond hair, somewhat disheveled, and dressed in a black skirt, with a
white dressing-sack thrown over her shoulders.

She smiled mechanically as she opened the door, and, as she saw a
strange face, she blushed crimson, and pulled her sack together beneath
her chin, fastening it with a pin.

"Monsieur Jacquemin?" said Andras, taking off his hat.

"Yes, Monsieur, he lives here," replied the young woman, a little