ame Nourrisson found them all three as serious as authors whose
collaboration does not meet with the success it deserves.

"Madame," said the intrepid hoaxer, showing her a pair of women's
slippers, "these belonged formerly to the Empress Josephine."

He felt it incumbent on him to return change for the Prince de Lamballe.

"Those!" she exclaimed; "they were made this year; look at the mark."

"Don't you perceive that the slippers are only by way of preface?" said
Leon; "though, to be sure, they are usually the conclusion of a tale."

"My friend here," said Bixiou, motioning to Gazonal, "has an immense
family interest in ascertaining whether a young lady of a good and
wealthy house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone wrong."

"How much will monsieur give for the information," she asked, looking at
Gazonal, who was no longer surprised by anything.

"One hundred francs," he said.

"No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of refusal worthy of a macaw.

"Then say how much you want, my little Madame Nourrisson," cried Bixiou
catching her round the waist.

"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've been in
the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness. Besides," she
said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and enforcing it by
an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn't concern your
happiness, it concerns your fortune; and at the height where I find you
lodging no man haggles over a 'dot'--Come," she said, "out with it! What
is it you want to know, my lambs?"

"About the Beunier family," replied Bixiou, very glad to find out
something in this indirect manner about persons in whom he was
interested.

"Oh! as for that," she said, "one louis is quite enough."

"Why?"

"Because I hold all the mother's jewels and she's on tenter-hooks
every three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay the
interest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there, simpleton?"
she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francs and I'll talk
four hundred worth."

Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and Madame Nourrisson gave
him startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-called
fashionable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively as
she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others.
Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three men
shudder by proving to them how little so-called happines