s not look quite the thing for women to take the name of
'X.' and 'Z.' And yet they never have any male visitors."

"They won't pay you."

"Oh, my fine fellow, they don't catch an old bird like me with chaff.
They took a room without a fireplace, and I made them pay the twenty
francs down for the fortnight. They are, perhaps, ill, for they have not
been down for the last two days. It is not indigestion that ails them,
for I don't think they have cooked anything since they came here."

"If you had all such customers, Father Micou--"

"Oh, they go and come. If I lodge people without passports, why, I also
have different people. I have now two travelling gents, a postman, the
leader of the band at the Cafe des Aveugles, and a lady of fortune,--all
most respectable persons, such as save the reputation of a house, if the
commissary is inclined to look a little too closely into things; they
are not night-lodgers, but tenants of the broad sunshine."

"When it comes into your alley, Father Micou."

"You're a wag. Another drain, yes, just one more."

"Well, it must be my last, for then I must cut. By the way, doesn't
Robin, the Gros-Boiteux, lodge here still?"

"Yes, up-stairs, on the same landing as the mother and daughter. He's
pretty nearly run through his money he earned in gaol."

"I say, mind your eye,--he's outlawed."

"I know it, but I can't get rid of him. I think he's got something in
hand, for little Tortillard came here the other night along with
Barbillon. I'm afraid he'll do something to my lodgers, so, when his
fortnight is up, I shall bundle him, telling him his room is taken for
an ambassador, or the husband of Madame Saint-Ildefonse, my independent
lady."

"An independent lady?"

"I believe you! Three rooms and a cabinet in the front,--nothing
less,--newly furnished, to say nothing of an attic for her servant.
Eighty francs a month, and paid in advance by her uncle, to whom she
gives one of her spare rooms when he comes up from the country. But I
believe his country-house is about the Rue Vivienne, or the Rue St.
Honore."

"I twig! She's independent because the old fellow pays."

"Hush! Here's her maid."

A middle-aged woman, wearing a white apron of very doubtful cleanliness,
entered the dealer's warehouse.

"What can I do for you, Madame Charles?"

"Father Micou, is your nephew within?"

"He has gone to the post-office; but I expect him in immediately."

"M. Badinot wishes him to take