on again.
There's our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!"

"Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don't have it mended at all--it is not
a misfortune," said his mistress.

"What can have happened?" thought Lemulquinier; "why isn't it a
misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?"

"Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin," said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
door.

The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--

"Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?"

"Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each."

"Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine
with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext,
I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about
it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In a few
months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed."

Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--

"I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
moment."

Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
with a pretended air of indifference.

Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce
from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his
habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to
indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed the
shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively with earthly
interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy. To marry into
the family of Claes would have been to him an object of extreme desire,
if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He could seem generous,
but for all that he was a ke