d Adele; "I gave madame my last twenty francs last
night to get her supper. The jade hasn't come back yet. Will you have
thirty sous?"

She ran to the grocer's. It was Sunday, and three o'clock in the
afternoon: the grocer had closed his shop.

There were a number of people at the fruitwoman's; she asked for four
sous' worth of herbs.

"I haven't any money," said she. She hoped that the woman would say: "Do
you want some?" Instead of that, she said: "What an idea! as if I was
afraid of you!" There were other maids there, so she went out without
saying anything more.

"Is there anything for us?" she said to the concierge. "Ah! by the way,
my Pipelet, you don't happen to have twenty francs about you, do you? it
will save my going way up-stairs again."

"Forty, if you want----"

She breathed freely. The concierge went to a desk at the back of the
lodge. "_Sapristi!_ my wife has taken the key. Why! how pale you are!"

"It isn't anything." And she rushed out into the courtyard toward the
door of the servant's staircase.

This is what she thought as she went up-stairs: "There are people who
find twenty-franc pieces. He needed them to-day, he told me.
Mademoiselle gave me my money not five days ago, and I can't ask her.
After all, what are twenty francs more or less to her? The grocer would
surely have lent them to me. I had another grocer on Rue Taitbout: he
didn't close till evening Sundays."

She was in front of her own door. She leaned over the rail of the other
staircase, looked to see if anyone was coming up, entered her room, went
straight to mademoiselle's bedchamber, opened the window and breathed
long and hard with her elbows on the window-sill. Sparrows hastened to
her from the neighboring chimneys, thinking that she was going to toss
bread to them. She closed the window and glanced at the top of the
commode--first at a vein of marble, then at a little sandal-wood box,
then at the key--a small steel key left in the lock. Suddenly there was
a ringing in her ears; she thought that the bell rang. She ran and
opened the door: there was no one there. She returned with the certainty
that she was alone, went to the kitchen for a cloth and began to rub a
mahogany armchair, turning her back to the commode; but she could still
see the box, she could see it lying open, she could see the coins at the
right where mademoiselle kept her gold, the papers in which she wrapped
it, a hundred francs in each;--her twenty fran