tes, and begged her to do him the honour of
entering his garret. She climbed the ladder nimbly enough and found
herself under a timbering, the sloping beams of which supported a tiled
roof pierced with a skylight. It was impossible to stand upright. She
sat down on the only chair there was in the wretched place; after a
brief glance at the broken tiling, she asked in a tone of surprise and
sorrow:

"Is this where you live, Maurice? You need have little fear of
intruders. One must be an imp or a cat to find you here."

"I am cramped for space," returned the _ci-devant_ millionaire; "and I
do not deny the fact that sometimes it rains on my pallet. It is a
trifling inconvenience. And on fine nights I can see the moon, symbol
and confidant of men's loves. For the moon, Madame, since the world
began, has been apostrophized by lovers, and at her full, with her pale
round face, she recalls to the fond swain's mind the object of his
desires."

"I know," sighed the _citoyenne_.

"When their time comes the cats make a fine pandemonium in the rain
gutter yonder. But we must forgive love if it makes them caterwaul and
swear on the tiles, seeing how it fills the lives of men with torments
and villanies."

Both had had the tact to greet each other as friends who had parted the
night before to take their night's rest, and though grown strangers to
each other, they conversed with a good grace and on a footing of
friendliness.

At the same time Madame de Rochemaure seemed pensive. The Revolution,
which had for a long while been pleasant and profitable to her, was now
a source of anxiety and disquietude; her suppers were growing less
brilliant and less merry. The notes of her harp no longer charmed the
cloud from sombre faces. Her play-tables were forsaken by the most
lavish punters. Many of her cronies, now numbered among the suspects,
were in hiding; her lover, Morhardt the financier, was under arrest,
and it was on his behalf she had come to sound the juror Gamelin. She
was suspect herself. A posse of National Guards had made a search at her
house, had turned out the drawers of her cabinets, prised up boards in
her floor, thrust their bayonets into her mattresses. They had found
nothing, had made their apologies and drunk her wine. But they had come
very near lighting on her correspondence with an _emigre_, Monsieur
d'Expilly. Certain friends he had among the Jacobins had warned her that
Henry, her handsome favourite, was begi