s----?"

"Mademoiselle Mirah?--I don't know that I ought to tell you."

The Baron slipped two five-franc pieces into the porter's hand.

"Well, she is now in the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, in a fine house,
given to her, they say, by the Duc d'Herouville," replied the man in a
whisper.

Having ascertained the number of the house, Monsieur Hulot called a
_milord_ and drove to one of those pretty modern houses with double
doors, where everything, from the gaslight at the entrance, proclaims
luxury.

The Baron, in his blue cloth coat, white neckcloth, nankeen trousers,
patent leather boots, and stiffly starched shirt-frill, was supposed to
be a guest, though a late arrival, by the janitor of this new Eden. His
alacrity of manner and quick step justified this opinion.

The porter rang a bell, and a footman appeared in the hall. This man, as
new as the house, admitted the visitor, who said to him in an imperious
tone, and with a lordly gesture:

"Take in this card to Mademoiselle Josepha."

The victim mechanically looked round the room in which he found
himself--an anteroom full of choice flowers and of furniture that must
have cost twenty thousand francs. The servant, on his return, begged
monsieur to wait in the drawing-room till the company came to their
coffee.

Though the Baron had been familiar with Imperial luxury, which was
undoubtedly prodigious, while its productions, though not durable in
kind, had nevertheless cost enormous sums, he stood dazzled, dumfounded,
in this drawing-room with three windows looking out on a garden like
fairyland, one of those gardens that are created in a month with a made
soil and transplanted shrubs, while the grass seems as if it must
be made to grow by some chemical process. He admired not only the
decoration, the gilding, the carving, in the most expensive Pompadour
style, as it is called, and the magnificent brocades, all of which any
enriched tradesman could have procured for money; but he also noted
such treasures as only princes can select and find, can pay for and give
away; two pictures by Greuze, two by Watteau, two heads by Vandyck, two
landscapes by Ruysdael, and two by le Guaspre, a Rembrandt, a Holbein, a
Murillo, and a Titian, two paintings, by Teniers, and a pair by Metzu,
a Van Huysum, and an Abraham Mignon--in short, two hundred thousand
francs' worth of pictures superbly framed. The gilding was worth almost
as much as the paintings.

"Ah, ha! Now you unders