e to us?"

"Oh, no, no!" cried the old man. "I would rather go to America."

"Adeline is on the scent."

"Oh, if only some one would pay my debts!" said the Baron, with a
suspicious look, "for Samanon is after me."

"We have not paid up the arrears yet; your son still owes a hundred
thousand francs."

"Poor boy!"

"And your pension will not be free before seven or eight months.--If you
will wait a minute, I have two thousand francs here."

The Baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.

"Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where
to go."

"But you will tell me, old wretch?"

"Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a little
angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be depraved."

"Do not forget the police-court," said Lisbeth, who flattered herself
that she would some day see Hulot there.

"No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the Baron, "a part of the town
where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me there.
I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a retired
cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my back to
be shorn any more."

"No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his coat. "Supposing
I take you there."

Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without
taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had
finished.

In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing
but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base
passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs in
his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door
of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.

"Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send
none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from
different parts."

"Trust me! Oh, I am really very lucky!" said the Baron, his face beaming
with the prospect of new and future happiness.

"No one can find him there," said Lisbeth; and she paid the coach at the
Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the Rue Louis-le-Grand in the
omnibus.

On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour when all the
family were together in the drawing-room, just after breakfast.
Celestine flew to throw her arms round her father's neck, and behaved
as if she had seen him only the day before, though in fact he had n