evalier."

"And that I there met with a very lucky chance?"

"No, monsieur, I did not know that."

"Yes, a very worthy friend of mine, a great nobleman, the viceroy of
Scotland and Ireland, has endowed me with an inheritance."

"An inheritance?"

"And a good one, too."

"Then you are rich?"

"Bah!"

"Receive my sincere congratulation."

"Thank you! Look, that is my house."

"Place de Greve?"

"Yes; don't you like this quarter?"

"On the contrary, the look-out over the water is pleasant. Oh! what a
pretty old house!"

"The sign Notre Dame; it is an old _cabaret_, which I have transformed
into a private house in two days."

"But the _cabaret_ is still open?"

"_Pardieu!_"

"And where do you lodge, then?"

"I? I lodge with Planchet."

"You said, just now, 'This is my house.'"

"I said so, because, in fact, it is my house. I have bought it."

"Ah!" said Raoul.

"At ten years' purchase, my dear Raoul; a superb affair; I bought the
house for thirty thousand livres; it has a garden which opens to the Rue
de la Mortillerie; the _cabaret_ lets for a thousand livres, with the
first story; the garret, or second floor, for five hundred livres."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, indeed."

"Five hundred livres for a garret? Why, it is not habitable."

"Therefore no one inhabits it; only, you see, this garret has two
windows which look out upon the Place."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Well, then, every time anybody is broken on the wheel or hung,
quartered, or burnt, these two windows let for twenty pistoles."

"Oh!" said Raoul, with horror.

"It is disgusting, is it not?" said D'Artagnan.

"Oh!" repeated Raoul.

"It is disgusting, but so it is. These Parisian cockneys are sometimes
real anthropophagi. I cannot conceive how men, Christians, can make such
speculation.

"That is true."

"As for myself," continued D'Artagnan, "if I inhabited that house, on
days of execution I would shut it up to the very keyholes; but I do not
inhabit it."

"And you let the garret for five hundred livres?"

"To the ferocious _cabaretier_, who sub-lets it. I said, then, fifteen
hundred livres."

"The natural interest of money," said Raoul,--"five per cent."

"Exactly so. I then have left the side of the house at the back,
store-rooms, and cellars, inundated every winter, two hundred livres;
and the garden, which is very fine, well planted, well shaded under the
walls and the portal of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais, thirteen hundr