"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,