him on as a gust of wind whirls away a straw. He found himself at last
in the Boulevard du Temple; how he had come thither he could not tell.
It was five o'clock, and, strange to say, he had completely lost his
appetite.

But if the reader is to understand the revolution which Pons'
unexpected return at that hour was to work in the Rue de Normandie,
the promised biography of Mme. Cibot must be given in this place.

Any one passing along the Rue de Normandie might be pardoned for
thinking that he was in some small provincial town. Grass runs to seed
in the street, everybody knows everybody else, and the sight of a
stranger is an event. The houses date back to the reign of Henry IV.,
when there was a scheme afoot for a quarter in which every street was
to be named after a French province, and all should converge in a
handsome square to which La France should stand godmother. The
Quartier de l'Europe was a revival of the same idea; history repeats
itself everywhere in the world, and even in the world of speculation.

The house in which the two musicians used to live is an old mansion
with a courtyard in front and a garden at the back; but the front part
of the house which gives upon the street is comparatively modern,
built during the eighteenth century when the Marais was a fashionable
quarter. The friends lived at the back, on the second floor of the old
part of the house. The whole building belongs to M. Pillerault, an old
man of eighty, who left matters very much in the hands of M. and Mme.
Cibot, his porters for the past twenty-six years.

Now, as a porter cannot live by his lodge alone, the aforesaid Cibot
had other means of gaining a livelihood; and supplemented his five per