. He has only
one word to say to his excellency. Monsieur the Prefect of Police is
still waiting downstairs, in the gallery."

"Very well," said the duke, "I am coming. But I should like first to
finish the matter of this costume. Let us see--friend, what's your
name--what are we deciding upon for these ruffs? Au revoir, doctor.
There is nothing to be done, is there, except to continue the pills?"

"Continue the pills," said Jenkins, bowing; and he left the room beaming
with delight at the two pieces of good fortune which were befalling him
at the same time--the honour of entertaining the duke and the pleasure
of obliging his dear Nabob. In the antechamber, the crowd of petitioners
through which he passed was still more numerous than at his entry;
newcomers had joined those who had been patiently waiting from the
first, others were mounting the staircase, with busy look and very pale,
and in the courtyard the carriages continued to arrive, and to range
themselves on ranks in a circle, gravely, solemnly, while the question
of the sleeve ruffs was being discussed upstairs with not less
solemnity.

"To the club," said Jenkins to his coachman.

The brougham bowled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, reached the
Place de la Concorde, which already no longer wore the same aspect as an
hour earlier. The fog was lifting in the direction of the Garde-Meuble
and the Greek temple of the Madeleine, allowing to be dimly
distinguished here and there the white plume of a jet of water, the
arcade of a palace, the upper portion of a statue, the tree-clumps of
the Tuileries, grouped in chilly fashion near the gates. The veil, not
raised, but broken in places, disclosed fragments of horizon; and on the
avenue which leads to the Arc de Triomphe could be seen brakes passing
at full trot laden with coachmen and jobmasters, dragoons of the
Empress, fuglemen bedizened with lace and covered with furs, going two
by two in long files with a jangling of bits and spurs, and the snorting
of fresh horses, the whole lighted by a sun still invisible, the light
issuing from the misty atmosphere, and here and there withdrawing into
it again as if offering a fleeting vision of the morning luxury of that
quarter of the town.

Jenkins alighted at the corner of the Rue Royale. From top to bottom of
the great gambling house the servants were passing to and fro, shaking
the carpets, airing the rooms where the fume of cigars still hung about
and heaps