ry, given
by prisoners to the guillotine), "be a good fellow, and tell me if it
really was Fil-de-Soie who sold me. I don't want him to suffer for some
one else, that would not be fair."

But before the chief had time to answer, the rest of the party returned
from making their investigations upstairs. Everything had been opened
and inventoried. A few words passed between them and the chief, and the
official preliminaries were complete.

"Gentlemen," said Collin, addressing the lodgers, "they will take me
away directly. You have all made my stay among you very agreeable, and I
shall look back upon it with gratitude. Receive my adieux, and permit me
to send you figs from Provence."

He advanced a step or two, and then turned to look once more at
Rastignac.

"Good-bye, Eugene," he said, in a sad and gentle tone, a strange
transition from his previous rough and stern manner. "If you should
be hard up, I have left you a devoted friend," and, in spite of his
shackles, he managed to assume a posture of defence, called, "One, two!"
like a fencing-master, and lunged. "If anything goes wrong, apply in
that quarter. Man and money, all at your service."

The strange speaker's manner was sufficiently burlesque, so that no
one but Rastignac knew that there was a serious meaning underlying the
pantomime.

As soon as the police, soldiers, and detectives had left the house,
Sylvie, who was rubbing her mistress' temples with vinegar, looked round
at the bewildered lodgers.

"Well," said she, "he was a man, he was, for all that."

Her words broke the spell. Every one had been too much excited, too much
moved by very various feelings to speak. But now the lodgers began
to look at each other, and then all eyes were turned at once on Mlle.
Michonneau, a thin, shriveled, dead-alive, mummy-like figure, crouching
by the stove; her eyes were downcast, as if she feared that the green
eye-shade could not shut out the expression of those faces from her.
This figure and the feeling of repulsion she had so long excited were
explained all at once. A smothered murmur filled the room; it was so
unanimous, that it seemed as if the same feeling of loathing had pitched
all the voices in one key. Mlle. Michonneau heard it, and did not stir.
It was Bianchon who was the first to move; he bent over his neighbor,
and said in a low voice, "If that creature is going to stop here, and
have dinner with us, I shall clear out."

In the twinkling of an eye