me out of a house where
he had just been dressing a pretty woman's head. This artist in question
enjoyed the custom of all the lower floor inmates of the house;
and among these, there flourished an elderly bachelor guarded by a
housekeeper who detested her master's next-of-kin. The _ci-devant_ young
man, falling seriously ill, the most famous of doctors of the day (they
were not as yet styled the "princes of science") had been called in to
consult upon his case; and it so chanced that the learned gentlemen were
taking leave of one another in the gateway just as the hairdresser came
out. They were talking as doctors usually talk among themselves when
the farce of a consultation is over. "He is a dead man," quoth Dr.
Haudry.--"He had not a month to live," added Desplein, "unless a miracle
takes place."--These were the words overheard by the hairdresser.

Like all hairdressers, he kept up a good understanding with his
customers' servants. Prodigious greed sent the man upstairs again;
he mounted to the _ci-devant_ young man's apartment, and promised the
servant-mistress a tolerably handsome commission to persuade her master
to sink a large portion of his money in an annuity. The dying bachelor,
fifty-six by count of years, and twice as old as his age by reason of
amorous campaigns, owned, among other property, a splendid house in
the Rue de Richelieu, worth at that time about two hundred and fifty
thousand francs. It was this house that the hairdresser coveted; and
on agreement to pay an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as the
bachelor lived, it passed into his hands. This happened in 1806. And
in this year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has
retired from business, he is seventy years old; the _ci-devant_ young
man is in his dotage; and as he has married his Mme. Evrard, he may last
for a long while yet. As the hairdresser gave the woman thirty thousand
francs, his bit of real estate has cost him, first and last, more than
a million, and the house at this day is worth eight or nine hundred
thousand francs.

Like the hairdresser, Remonencq the Auvergnat had overheard Brunner's
parting remark in the gateway on the day of Cecile's first interview
with that phoenix of eligible men. Remonencq at once longed to gain a
sight of Pons' museum; and as he lived on good terms with his neighbors
the Cibots, it was not very long before the opportunity came one day
when the friends were out. The sight of su