u some."

"Impossible, you live at Montrouge, and I have business at six o'clock
at the Chaussee d'Antin. Confound it."

"I have a trifle about me," said Providence, timidly, "but it is very
little."

"If I had enough to take a cab I might get to Batignolles in time."

"Here is the contents of my purse, my dear fellow, thirty one sous."

"Give it to me at once, that I may bolt," said Rodolphe, who had just
heard five o'clock strike, and who hastened off to keep his appointment.

"It has been hard to get," said he, counting out his money. "A hundred
sous exactly. At last I am supplied, and Laure will see that she has to
do with a man who knows how to do things properly. I won't take a
centime home this evening. We must rehabilitate literature, and prove
that its votaries only need money to be wealthy."

Rodolphe found Mademoiselle Laure at the trysting place.

"Good," said he, "for punctuality she is a feminine chronometer."

He spent the evening with her, and bravely melted down his five francs
in the crucible of prodigality. Mademoiselle Laure was charmed with his
manners, and was good enough only to notice that Rodolphe had not
escorted her home at the moment when he was ushering her into his own
room.

"I am committing a fault," said she. "Do not make me repent of it by the
ingratitude which is characteristic of your sex."

"Madame," said Rodolphe, "I am known for my constancy. It is such that
all my friends are astonished at my fidelity, and have nicknamed me the
General Bertrand of Love."

CHAPTER IX

THE WHITE VIOLETS

About this time Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angela,
who couldn't bear him; and the thermometer was twelve degrees below
freezing point.

Mademoiselle Angela was the daughter of Monsieur Monetti, the chimney
doctor, of whom we have already had occasion to speak. She was eighteen
years old, and had just come from Burgundy, where she lived five years
with a relative who was to leave her all her property. This relative was
an old lady who had never been young apparently--certainly never
handsome, but had always been very ill-natured, although--or perhaps
because--very superstitious. Angela, who at her departure was a charming
child, and promised to be a charming girl, came back at the end of the
five years a pretty enough young lady, but cold, dry, and uninteresting.
Her secluded provincial life, and the narrow and bigoted education she
had received, had fil