ay morning, early, toward the middle of spring, in the year
16,--such was his mode of reckoning,--at the moment when the chevalier
was putting on his old green-flowered damask dressing-gown, he heard,
despite the cotton in his ears, the light step of a young girl who was
running up the stairway. Presently three taps were discreetly struck
upon the door; then, without waiting for any response, a handsome girl
slipped like an eel into the room occupied by the old bachelor.

"Ah! is it you, Suzanne?" said the Chevalier de Valois, without
discontinuing his occupation, which was that of stropping his razor.
"What have you come for, my dear little jewel of mischief?"

"I have come to tell you something which may perhaps give you as much
pleasure as pain?"

"Is it anything about Cesarine?"

"Cesarine! much I care about your Cesarine!" she said with a saucy air,
half serious, half indifferent.

This charming Suzanne, whose present comical performance was to exercise
a great influence in the principal personages of our history, was a
work-girl at Madame Lardot's. One word here on the topography of the
house. The wash-rooms occupied the whole of the ground floor. The little
courtyard was used to hang out on wire cords embroidered handkerchiefs,
collarets, capes, cuffs, frilled shirts, cravats, laces, embroidered
dresses,--in short, all the fine linen of the best families of the town.
The chevalier assumed to know from the number of her capes in the wash
how the love-affairs of the wife of the prefect were going on. Though
he guessed much from observations of this kind, the chevalier was
discretion itself; he was never betrayed into an epigram (he had plenty
of wit) which might have closed to him an agreeable salon. You are
therefore to consider Monsieur de Valois as a man of superior manners,
whose talents, like those of many others, were lost in a narrow sphere.
Only--for, after all, he was a man--he permitted himself certain
penetrating glances which could make some women tremble; although they
all loved him heartily as soon as they discovered the depth of his
discretion and the sympathy that he felt for their little weaknesses.

The head woman, Madame Lardot's factotum, an old maid of forty-six,
hideous to behold, lived on the opposite side of the passage to the
chevalier. Above them were the attics where the linen was dried in
winter. Each apartment had two rooms,--one lighted from the street, the
other from the courtya