"Why, he must be an old miser," muttered the servant.

"He is above all peculiar," continued the shop-keeper, "like most
men of figures, it seems. His own life is ruled and regulated like
the pages of his ledger. In the neighborhood they call him Old
Punctuality; and, when he passes through the Rue Turenne, the
merchants set their watches by him. Rain or shine, every morning of
the year, on the stroke of nine, he appears at the door on the way
to his office. When he returns, you may be sure it is between twenty
and twenty-five minutes past five. At six he dines; at seven he goes
to play a game of dominoes at the Cafe Turc; at ten he comes home
and goes to bed; and, at the first stroke of eleven at the Church of
St. Louis, out goes his candle."

"Hem!" grumbled the servant with a look of contempt, "the question
is, will my cousin be willing to live with a man who is a sort of
walking clock?"

"It isn't always pleasant," remarked the wine-man; "and the best
evidence is, that the son, M. Maxence, got tired of it."

"He does not live with his parents any more?"

"He dines with them; but he has his own lodgings on the Boulevard du
Temple. The falling-out made talk enough at the time; and some
people do say that M. Maxence is a worthless scamp, who leads a very
dissipated life; but I say that his father kept him too close. The
boy is twenty-five, quite good looking, and has a very stylish
mistress: I have seen her. . . . I would have done just as he did."

"And what about the daughter, Mlle. Gilberte?"

"She is not married yet, although she is past twenty, and pretty as
a rosebud. After the war, her father tried to make her marry a
stock-broker, a stylish man who always came in a two-horse carriage;
but she refused him outright. I should not be a bit surprised to
hear that she has some love-affair of her own. I have noticed
lately a young gentleman about here who looks up quite suspiciously
when he goes by No. 38." The servant did not seem to find these
particulars very interesting.

"It's the lady," he said, "that my cousin would like to know most
about."

"Naturally. Well, you can safely tell her that she never will have
had a better mistress. Poor Madame Favoral! She must have had a
sweet time of it with her maniac of a husband! But she is not young
any more; and people get accustomed to every thing, you know. The
days when the weather is fine, I see her going by with her daughter
to the Place R