wn up
under my training, and I think you will find him a faithful servant."

A "have you finished, you old liar?" rose to Chupin's lips, but respect
for Mademoiselle Marguerite prevented him from uttering the words.
"Then everything is decided," she said, pleasantly. And with a smile she
offered her hand to Chupin as one does in concluding a bargain.

If he had yielded to his first impulse he would have thrown himself on
his knees and kissed this hand of hers, the whitest and most beautiful
he had ever seen. As it was, he only ventured to touch it with his
finger-tips, and yet he changed color two or three times. "What a
woman!" he exclaimed, when she had left them. "A perfect queen! A man
would willingly allow himself to be chopped in pieces for her sake; and
she's as good and as clever as she's handsome. Did you notice, monsieur,
that she did not offer to pay me. She understood that I offered to work
for her for my own pleasure, for my own satisfaction and honor. Heavens!
how I should have chafed if she had offered me money. How provoked I
should have been!"

Chupin was so fascinated that he wished no reward for his toil! This was
so astonishing that M. Fortunat remained for a moment speechless with
surprise. "Have you gone mad, Victor?" he inquired at last.

"Mad! I?--not at all; I'm only becoming----" He stopped short. He was
going to add: "an honest man." But it is scarcely proper to talk about
the rope in the hangman's house, and there are certain words which
should never be pronounced in the presence of certain people. Chupin
knew this, and so he quickly resumed: "When I become rich, when I'm a
great banker, and have a host of clerks who spend their time in counting
my gold behind a grating, I should like to have a wife of my own like
that. But I must be off about my business now, so till we meet again,
monsieur."

The foregoing conversation will explain how it happened that Madame Leon
chanced to surprise her dear young lady in close conversation with
a vagabond clad in a blouse. Victor Chupin was not a person to make
promises and then leave them unfulfilled. Though he was usually
unimpressionable, like all who lead a precarious existence, still, when
his emotions were once aroused, they did not spend themselves in
empty protestations. It became his fixed determination to find Pascal
Ferailleur, and the difficulties of the task in no wise weakened his
resolution. His starting point was that Pascal had lived