are so quick at picking a costume to pieces! When
Madame Risler went out, about three o'clock, fifty pairs of sharp,
envious eyes, lying in ambush at the windows of the polishing-shop,
watched her pass, penetrating to the lowest depths of her guilty
conscience through her black velvet dolman and her cuirass of sparkling
jet.

Although she did not suspect it, all the secrets of that mad brain were
flying about her like the ribbons that played upon her bare neck; and
her daintily-shod feet, in their bronzed boots with ten buttons, told
the story of all sorts of clandestine expeditions, of the carpeted
stairways they ascended at night on their way to supper, and the warm
fur robes in which they were wrapped when the coupe made the circuit of
the lake in the darkness dotted with lanterns.

The work-women laughed sneeringly and whispered:

"Just look at that Tata Bebelle! A fine way to dress to go out. She
don't rig herself up like that to go to mass, that's sure! To think that
it ain't three years since she used to start for the shop every morning
in an old waterproof, and two sous' worth of roasted chestnuts in her
pockets to keep her fingers warm. Now she rides in her carriage."

And amid the talc dust and the roaring of the stoves, red-hot in winter
and summer alike, more than one poor girl reflected on the caprice of
chance in absolutely transforming a woman's existence, and began to
dream vaguely of a magnificent future which might perhaps be in store
for herself without her suspecting it.

In everybody's opinion Risler was a dishonored husband. Two
assistants in the printing-room--faithful patrons of the Folies
Dramatiques--declared that they had seen Madame Risler several times at
their theatre, accompanied by some escort who kept out of sight at the
rear of the box. Pere Achille, too, told of amazing things. That Sidonie
had a lover, that she had several lovers, in fact, no one entertained a
doubt. But no one had as yet thought of Fromont jeune.

And yet she showed no prudence whatever in her relations with him. On
the contrary, she seemed to make a parade of them; it may be that that
was what saved them. How many times she accosted him boldly on the
steps to agree upon a rendezvous for the evening! How many times she
had amused herself in making him shudder by looking into his eyes before
every one! When the first confusion had passed, Georges was grateful
to her for these exhibitions of audacity, which he at