remiums offered to him.

* * * * *

"Listen, my little Jenny," he said in a hackney-coach to a pretty
florist.

All truly great men delight in allowing themselves to be tyrannized over
by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny. He was
bringing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase, whither he had
taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium box on the first tier.

"On my return, Jenny, I shall refurnish your room in superior style.
That big Matilda, who pesters you with comparisons and her real India
shawls imported by the suite of the Russian ambassador, and her
silver plate and her Russian prince,--who to my mind is nothing but a
humbug,--won't have a word to say THEN. I consecrate to the adornment of
your room all the 'Children' I shall get in the provinces."

"Well, that's a pretty thing to say!" cried the florist. "Monster of
a man! Do you dare to talk to me of your children? Do you suppose I am
going to stand that sort of thing?"

"Oh, what a goose you are, my Jenny! That's only a figure of speech in
our business."

"A fine business, then!"

"Well, but listen; if you talk all the time you'll always be in the
right."

"I mean to be. Upon my word, you take things easy!"

"You don't let me finish. I have taken under my protection a superlative
idea,--a journal, a newspaper, written for children. In our profession,
when travellers have caught, let us suppose, ten subscribers to the
'Children's Journal,' they say, 'I've got ten Children,' just as I say
when I get ten subscriptions to a newspaper called the 'Movement,' 'I've
got ten Movements.' Now don't you see?"

"That's all right. Are you going into politics? If you do you'll get
into Saint-Pelagie, and I shall have to trot down there after you. Oh!
if one only knew what one puts one's foot into when we love a man, on
my word of honor we would let you alone to take care of yourselves,
you men! However, if you are going away to-morrow we won't talk of
disagreeable things,--that would be silly."

The coach stopped before a pretty house, newly built in the Rue
d'Artois, where Gaudissart and Jenny climbed to the fourth story. This
was the abode of Mademoiselle Jenny Courand, commonly reported to be
privately married to the illustrious Gaudissart, a rumor which that
individual did not deny. To maintain her supremacy, Jenny kept him
to the performance of innumerable small attentions, and threatened
continually to turn him off if he