ieur Roguin had
drawn them up.

"I do not dispute the legal talents of Monsieur Roguin, an old name
well-known in the notariat of Paris; but I have my own little customs, I
do my own business (an excusable hobby), and my notary is--"

"But this matter is very simple," said the perfumer, who was used to the
quick business methods of merchants.

"Simple!" cried Molineux. "Nothing is simple in such matters. Ah! you
are not a landlord, monsieur, and you may think yourself happy. If
you knew to what lengths of ingratitude tenants can go, and to what
precautions we are driven! Why, monsieur, I once had a tenant--"

And for a quarter an hour he recounted how a Monsieur Gendrin, designer,
had deceived the vigilance of his porter, Rue Saint-Honore. Monsieur
Gendrin had committed infamies worthy of Marat,--obscene drawings at
which the police winked. This Gendrin, a profoundly immoral artist,
had brought in women of bad lives, and made the staircase
intolerable,--conduct worthy of a man who made caricatures of the
government. And why such conduct? Because his rent had been asked for on
the 15th! Gendrin and Molineux were about to have a lawsuit, for, though
he did not pay, Gendrin insisted on holding the empty appartement.
Molineux received anonymous letters, no doubt from Gendrin, which
threatened him with assassination some night in the passages about the
Cour Batave.

"It has got to such a pass, monsieur," he said, winding up the tale,
"that monsieur the prefect of police, to whom I confided my trouble (I
profited by the occasion to drop him a few words on the modifications
which should be introduced into the laws to meet the case), has
authorized me to carry pistols for my personal safety."

The little old man got up and fetched the pistols.

"There they are!" he cried.

"But, monsieur, you have nothing to fear from me," said Birotteau,
looking at Cayron, and giving him a glance and a smile intended to
express pity for such a man.

Molineux detected it; he was mortified at such a look from an officer
of the municipality, whose duty it was to protect all persons under
his administration. In any one else he might have pardoned it, but in
Birotteau the deputy-mayor, never!

"Monsieur," he said in a dry tone, "an esteemed commercial judge, a
deputy-mayor, and an honorable merchant would not descend to such petty
meannesses,--for they are meannesses. But in your case there is an
opening through the wall which must be