xistence of pleasure and luxury, and who the woman was to whom the
article alluded.

But in the mean time he had reached his hotel,--the Hotel des
Folies. After a moment of hesitation,

"Bash!" he thought, "I have the whole day to call at the office of
the paper."

And he started in the corridor of the hotel, a corridor that was so
long, so dark, and so narrow, that it gave an idea of the shaft of
a mine, and that it was prudent, before entering it, to make sure
that no one was coming in the opposite direction. It was from the
neighboring theatre, des Folies-Nouvelles (now the Theatre Dejazet),
that the hotel had taken its name.

It consists of the rear building of a large old house, and has no
frontage on the Boulevard, where nothing betrays its existence,
except a lantern hung over a low and narrow door, between a cafe
and a confectionery-shop. It is one of those hotels, as there are
a good many in Paris, somewhat mysterious and suspicious, ill-kept,
and whose profits remain a mystery for simple-minded folks. Who
occupy the apartments of the first and second story? No one knows.
Never have the most curious of the neighbors discovered the face
of a tenant. And yet they are occupied; for often, in the
afternoon, a curtain is drawn aside, and a shadow is seen to move.
In the evening, lights are noticed within; and sometimes the sound
of a cracked old piano is heard.

Above the second story, the mystery ceases. All the upper rooms,
the price of which is relatively modest, are occupied by tenants
who may be seen and heard,--clerks like Maxence, shop-girls from
the neighborhood, a few restaurant-waiters, and sometimes some poor
devil of an actor or chorus-singer from the Theatre Dejazet, the
Circus, or the Chateau d'Eau. One of the great advantages of the
Hotel des Folies--and Mme. Fortin, the landlady, never failed to
point it out to the new tenants, an inestimable advantage, she
declared--was a back entrance on the Rue Beranger.

"And everybody knows," she concluded, "that there is no chance of
being caught, when one has the good luck of living in a house that
has two outlets."

When Maxence entered the office, a small, dark, and dirty room,
the proprietors, M. and Mme. Fortin were just finishing their
breakfast with an immense bowl of coffee of doubtful color, of
which an enormous red cat was taking a share.

"Ah, here is M. Favoral!" they exclaimed.

There was no mistaking their tone. They knew the