th the other. I do not wish him any harm, but it
amuses me immensely to think how he has been befooled; and he will go on
believing and expecting from day to day, because he is too vain to
imagine he is being laughed at. At any rate, if the lady ever comes in
reality, I will let my friend the oyster-woman next door know; she
enjoys a joke as well as I do, and is quite as curious as myself to find
out what sort of person she is, whether fair or dark, pretty or plain.
And--who knows?--this woman may be cheating some easygoing simpleton of
a husband for the sake of our two-penny-halfpenny of a commandant! Well,
that is no concern of mine, but I am sorry, too, for the poor, dear,
deceived individual, whoever he may be. Dear me! Dear me! My pot is
boiling over,--excuse me a minute, I must just look to it. Ah, it is
time Alfred was in, for dinner is quite ready, and tripe, you know,
should never be kept waiting. This tripe is done to a turn. Do you
prefer the thick or thin tripe? Alfred likes it thick. The poor darling
has been sadly out of spirits lately, and I got this dainty dish to
cheer him up a bit; for, as Alfred says himself, that for a bribe of
good thick tripe he would betray France itself,--his beloved France.
Yes, the dear old pet would change his country for such fine fat tripe
as this, he would."

While Madame Pipelet was thus delivering her domestic harangue upon the
virtues of tripe and the powerful influence it possessed over even the
patriotism of her husband, Rodolph was buried in the deepest and most
sombre reflections. The female, whose visits to the house had just been
detailed, be she the Marquise d'Harville or any other individual, had
evidently long struggled with her imprudence ere she had brought herself
to grant a first and second rendezvous, and then, terrified at the
probable consequences of her imprudence, a salutary remorse had, in all
probability, prevented her from fulfilling her dangerous engagement. It
might be that the fine person this M. Charles was described as
possessing had captivated the senses of Madame d'Harville, whom Rodolph
knew well as a woman of deep feeling, high intellect, and superior
taste, of an elevated turn of mind, and a reputation unsullied by the
faintest breath of slander. After long and mature consideration, he
succeeded in persuading himself that the wife of his friend had nothing
to do with the unknown female in the blue _fiacre_. Madame Pipelet,
having completed