nchanter
with a golden wand. The porter, when he went down, told his wife that if
the new lodger was not more careful of his money, he would ruin his
family, and showed her two crowns of six francs, which he had saved out
of the double louis. The woman took the two crowns from the hands of her
husband, calling him a drunkard, and put them into a little bag, hidden
under a heap of old clothes, deploring the misfortune of fathers and
mothers who bleed themselves to death for such good-for-nothings. This
was the funeral oration of the chevalier's double louis.

CHAPTER IX.

A CITIZEN OF THE RUE DU TEMPS PERDU.

During this time D'Harmental was seated before the spinet, playing his
best. The shopkeeper had had a sort of conscience, and had sent him an
instrument nearly in tune, so that the chevalier began to perceive that
he was doing wonders, and almost believed he was born with a genius for
music, which had only required such a circumstance to develop itself.
Doubtless there was some truth in this, for in the middle of a brilliant
shake he saw, from the other side of the street, five little fingers
delicately raising the curtain to see from whence this unaccustomed
harmony proceeded. Unfortunately, at the sight of these fingers the
chevalier forgot his music, and turned round quickly on the stool, in
hopes of seeing a face behind the hand.

This ill-judged maneuver ruined him. The mistress of the little room,
surprised in the act of curiosity, let the curtain fall. D'Harmental,
wounded by this prudery, closed his window. The evening passed in
reading, drawing, and playing. The chevalier could not have believed
that there were so many minutes in an hour, or so many hours in a day.
At ten o'clock in the evening he rang for the porter, to give orders for
the next day; but no one answered; he had been in bed a long time, and
D'Harmental learned that there were people who went to bed about the
time he ordered his carriage to pay visits.

[Illustration: D'HARMENTAL--Page 247.]

This set him thinking of the strange manners of that unfortunate class
of society who do not know the opera, who do not go to supper-parties,
and who sleep all night and are awake all day. He thought you must come
to the Rue du Temps Perdu to see such things, and promised himself to
amuse his friends with an account of this singularity. He was glad to
see also that his neighbor watched like himself. This showed in her a
mind superior to th