ram of Hiram,
an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up
in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the
illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and,
above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and
Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the
child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of
life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for the golden
calf.

"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich,
very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon plucked
him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The miserable
man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with the Marquis
d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say nothing of unknown
worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that very rich Duke, who
is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his name?--a dwarf.--Ah, the
Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman insists on having Josepha for his
very own, and all that set are talking about it; the Baron knows nothing
of it as yet; for it is the same in the Thirteenth Arrondissement as in
every other: the lover, like the husband, is last to get the news.

"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has robbed
me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a
widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old
rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have
placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted,
and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and
wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as
shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown lashes,
the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a dependent,
decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by that Hulot's
doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a man-trap, a
money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of Trollops;
and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew nothing, not even that
word."

At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of
tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and roused her
from the meditation into which she had sunk.

"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such anoth