I have come to see M. Fraisier; his friend, Dr. Poulain, sent me."

"Oh! come in, missus," said La Sauvage, grown very amiable of a sudden,
which proves that she was prepared for this morning visit.

With a sweeping courtesy, the stalwart woman flung open the door of
a private office, which looked upon the street, and discovered the
ex-attorney of Mantes.

The room was a complete picture of a third-rate solicitor's office; with
the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old that they had grown
beards (in ecclesiastical language), the red tape dangling limp and
dejected, the pasteboard boxes covered with traces of the gambols of
mice, the dirty floor, the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance
of wood was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And on
the chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a modern clock with
an inlaid wooden case; Fraisier had picked it up at an execution sale,
together with the tawdry imitation rococo candlesticks, with the zinc
beneath showing through the lacquer in several places.

M. Fraisier was small, thin, and unwholesome looking; his red face,
covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; and he had, moreover, a
trick of continually scratching his right arm. A wig pushed to the back
of his head displayed a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation.
This person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a green
leather cushion, assumed an agreeable expression, and brought forward a
chair.

"Mme. Cibot, I believe?" queried he, in dulcet tones.

"Yes, sir," answered the portress. She had lost her habitual assurance.

Something in the tones of a voice which strongly resembled the sounds of
the little door-bell, something in a glance even sharper than the sharp
green eyes of her future legal adviser, scared Mme. Cibot. Fraisier's
presence so pervaded the room, that any one might have thought there
was pestilence in the air; and in a flash Mme. Cibot understood why Mme.
Florimond had not become Mme. Fraisier.

"Poulain told me about you, my dear madame," said the lawyer, in the
unnatural fashion commonly described by the words "mincing tones"; tones
sharp, thin, and grating as verjuice, in spite of all his efforts.

Arrived at this point, he tried to draw the skirts of his dressing-gown
over a pair of angular knees encased in threadbare felt. The robe was
an ancient printed cotton garment, lined with wadding which took the
liberty of protruding