n a short time, why, we shall leave you for
the present, and return in about four or five days; but you must not
disappoint us then, remember!"

"Thank you, gentlemen. I have no doubt I shall be able to pay you then."

The bailiffs then withdrew, while Tortillard, hearing the men talk of
quitting the room, had hastened down-stairs for fear of being detected
listening.

"There, Madame Morel!" said Rigolette, endeavouring to draw the wife of
the lapidary from the state of gloomy abstraction into which she had
fallen, "do you hear that? The men have gone, and left your husband
undisturbed."

"Mother! mother!" exclaimed the children, joyfully, "they have not taken
father away!"

"Morel, Morel!" murmured Madeleine, her brain quite turned, "take one
of those diamonds--take the largest--and sell it; no one will know it,
and then we shall be delivered from our misery; poor little Adele will
get warm then, and come back to us."

Taking advantage of the instant when no one was observing him, the
lapidary profited by it to steal from the room. One of the men was
waiting for him on the little landing-place, which was also covered only
by the roof; on this small spot opened the door of a garret, which
adjoined the apartment occupied by the Morels, and in which M. Pipelet
kept his depot of leather; and, further, this little angular recess, in
which a person could not stand upright, was dignified by the melancholy
porter with the name of his Melodramatic Cabinet, because, by means of a
hole between the lath and plaster, he frequently indulged in the luxury
of woe by witnessing the many touching scenes occasioned by the distress
of the wretched family who dwelt in the garret beyond it. This door had
not escaped the lynx eye of the bailiff, who had, for a time, suspected
his prisoner of intending either to escape or conceal himself by means
of it.

"Now, then, let us make a start of it!" cried he, beginning to descend
the stairs as Morel emerged from the garret. "Rather a ragged recruit to
march with," added he, beckoning to the lapidary to follow him.

"Only an instant, one single instant, for the love of God!" exclaimed
Morel, as, kneeling down, he cast a last look on his wife and children
through a chink in the door. Then clasping his hands, he said, in a low,
heart-broken voice, while bitter tears flowed down his haggard cheeks:

"Adieu, my poor children! my wife! May Heaven preserve you all!
Farewell, farewell!"

"Come