med Crevel,
his natural feeling coming to the top.

"If you love me, Celestin," said she in Crevel's ear, which she
touched with her lips, "keep him there, or I am done for. Marneffe is
suspicious. Hector has a key of the outer gate, and will certainly
come back."

Crevel clasped Madame Marneffe to his heart, and went away in the
seventh heaven of delight. Valerie fondly escorted him to the landing,
and then followed him, like a woman magnetized, down the stairs to the
very bottom.

"My Valerie, go back, do not compromise yourself before the porters.
--Go back; my life, my treasure, all is yours.--Go in, my duchess!"

"Madame Olivier," Valerie called gently when the gate was closed.

"Why, madame! You here?" said the woman in bewilderment.

"Bolt the gates at top and bottom, and let no one in."

"Very good, madame."

Having barred the gate, Madame Olivier told of the bribe that the War
Office chief had tried to offer her.

"You behaved like an angel, my dear Olivier; we shall talk of that
to-morrow."

Valerie flew like an arrow to the third floor, tapped three times at
Lisbeth's door, and then went down to her room, where she gave
instructions to Mademoiselle Reine, for a woman must make the most of
the opportunity when a Montes arrives from Brazil.

"By Heaven! only a woman of the world is capable of such love," said
Crevel to himself. "How she came down those stairs, lighting them up
with her eyes, following me! Never did Josepha--Josepha! she is
cag-mag!" cried the ex-bagman. "What have I said? _Cag-mag_--why, I
might have let the word slip out at the Tuileries! I can never do any
good unless Valerie educates me--and I was so bent on being a
gentleman.--What a woman she is! She upsets me like a fit of the
colic when she looks at me coldly. What grace! What wit! Never did
Josepha move me so. And what perfection when you come to know her!
--Ha, there is my man!"

He perceived in the gloom of the Rue de Babylone the tall, somewhat
stooping figure of Hulot, stealing along close to a boarding, and he
went straight up to him.

"Good-morning, Baron, for it is past midnight, my dear fellow. What
the devil are your doing here? You are airing yourself under a
pleasant drizzle. That is not wholesome at our time of life. Will you
let me give you a little piece of advice? Let each of us go home; for,
between you and me, you will not see the candle in the window."

The last words made the Baron suddenly awar