my eyes when I saw the
furniture and the pictures and the faces again. How Paris changes one's
ideas!"

"Is that a good thing?" asked Eve, at last beginning to understand.

"Come, come; you are still asleep. We will talk about it to-morrow after
breakfast."

Cerizet's plot was exceedingly simple, a commonplace stratagem
familiar to the provincial bailiff. Its success entirely depends
upon circumstances, and in this case it was certain, so intimate was
Cerizet's knowledge of the characters and hopes of those concerned.
Cerizet had been a kind of Don Juan among the young work-girls, ruling
his victims by playing one off against another. Since he had been the
Cointet's extra foreman, he had singled out one of Basine Clerget's
assistants, a girl almost as handsome as Mme. Sechard. Henriette
Signol's parents owned a small vineyard two leagues out of Angouleme,
on the road to Saintes. The Signols, like everybody else in the country,
could not afford to keep their only child at home; so they meant her to
go out to service, in country phrase. The art of clear-starching is
a part of every country housemaid's training; and so great was
Mme. Prieur's reputation, that the Signols sent Henriette to her as
apprentice, and paid for their daughter's board and lodging.

Mme. Prieur was one of the old-fashioned mistresses, who consider that
they fill a parent's place towards their apprentices. They were part of
the family; she took them with her to church, and looked scrupulously
after them. Henriette Signol was a tall, fine-looking girl, with bold
eyes, and long, thick, dark hair, and the pale, very fair complexion
of girls in the South--white as a magnolia flower. For which reasons
Henriette was one of the first on whom Cerizet cast his eyes; but
Henriette came of "honest farmer folk," and only yielded at last to
jealousy, to bad example, and the treacherous promise of subsequent
marriage. By this time Cerizet was the Cointet's foreman. When he
learned that the Signols owned a vineyard worth some ten or twelve
thousand francs, and a tolerably comfortable cottage, he hastened to
make it impossible for Henriette to marry any one else. Affairs had
reached this point when Petit-Claud held out the prospect of a printing
office and twenty thousand francs of borrowed capital, which was to
prove a yoke upon the borrower's neck. Cerizet was dazzled, the offer
turned his head; Henriette Signol was now only an obstacle in the way
of his amb