fe, the old maid on the third floor at the back of the
courtyard, who lives with that young man, is his cousin. Is it not odd
that we should never have known that till to-day, and now find it out by
chance?"

"Mademoiselle Fischer living with a young man?" repeated the husband.
"That is porter's gossip; do not speak so lightly of the cousin of
a Councillor of State who can blow hot and cold in the office as he
pleases. Now, come to dinner; I have been waiting for you since four
o'clock."

Pretty--very pretty--Madame Marneffe, the natural daughter of Comte
Montcornet, one of Napoleon's most famous officers, had, on the strength
of a marriage portion of twenty thousand francs, found a husband in an
inferior official at the War Office. Through the interest of the
famous lieutenant-general--made marshal of France six months before his
death--this quill-driver had risen to unhoped-for dignity as head-clerk
of his office; but just as he was to be promoted to be deputy-chief, the
marshal's death had cut off Marneffe's ambitions and his wife's at the
root. The very small salary enjoyed by Sieur Marneffe had compelled the
couple to economize in the matter of rent; for in his hands Mademoiselle
Valerie Fortin's fortune had already melted away--partly in paying his
debts, and partly in the purchase of necessaries for furnishing a house,
but chiefly in gratifying the requirements of a pretty young wife,
accustomed in her mother's house to luxuries she did not choose to
dispense with. The situation of the Rue du Doyenne, within easy distance
of the War Office, and the gay part of Paris, smiled on Monsieur and
Madame Marneffe, and for the last four years they had dwelt under the
same roof as Lisbeth Fischer.

Monsieur Jean-Paul-Stanislas Marneffe was one of the class of employes
who escape sheer brutishness by the kind of power that comes of
depravity. The small, lean creature, with thin hair and a starved beard,
an unwholesome pasty face, worn rather than wrinkled, with red-lidded
eyes harnessed with spectacles, shuffling in his gait, and yet meaner in
his appearance, realized the type of man that any one would conceive of
as likely to be placed in the dock for an offence against decency.

The rooms inhabited by this couple had the illusory appearance of sham
luxury seen in many Paris homes, and typical of a certain class of
household. In the drawing-room, the furniture covered with shabby cotton
velvet, the plaster statuettes p