not open. He waited several
minutes, and in his nervous impatience walked restlessly up and down the
court. At last an old woman appeared carrying a small wax taper. She was
feeble and bent, and began to excuse herself; she was alone and could
not be everywhere at the same time, in her lodge and lighting the lamps
on the stairways. Caffie lived on the first floor, in the wing on the
street.

Saniel mounted the stairs and rang the bell. A long time passed, or
at least it seemed long to him, before there was an answer. At last he
heard a slow and heavy step on the tiled floor and the door was opened,
but held by a hand and a foot.

"What do you wish?"

"Monsieur Caffie."

"I am he. Who are you?"

"Doctor Saniel."

"I have not sent for a doctor."

"It is not as doctor that I am here, but as client."

"This is not the hour when I receive clients."

"But you are at home."

"That is a fact!"

And Caffie, concluding to open the door, asked Saniel to enter, and then
closed it.

"Come into my office."

They were in a small room filled with papers that had only an old desk
and three chairs for furniture; it communicated with the office of the
business man, which was larger, but furnished with the same simplicity
and strewn with scraps of paper that had a mouldy smell.

"My clerk is ill just now," Caffie said, "and when I am alone I do not
like to open the door."

After giving this excuse he offered Saniel a chair, and, seating himself
before his desk, lighted by a lamp from which he had taken the shade, he
said:

"Doctor, I am ready to listen to you."

He replaced the shade on the lamp.

Saniel made his request concisely, without the details that he
had entered into with Glady. He owed three thousand francs to the
upholsterer who had furnished his apartment, and as he could not pay
immediately he was in danger of being prosecuted.

"Who is the upholsterer?" Caffie asked, while holding his left jaw with
his right hand.

"Jardine, Boulevard Haussmann."

"I know him. It is his trade to take back his furniture in this way,
after three quarters of the sum has been paid, and he has become rich at
it. How much money have you already paid of this ten thousand francs?"

"Including the interest and what I have paid in instalments, nearly
twelve thousand francs."

"And you still owe three thousand?"

"Yes."

"That is nice."

Caffie seemed full of admiration for this manner of proceeding.

"What guara