have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third."

"Then he has half the rooms in the inn," remarked Mademoiselle
Herbelot.

"Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?" said
Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. "I am talking
of the man himself--"

"Don't interrupt the orator," put in Vinet.

"As I was stooping--"

"Seated?" asked Antonin.

"Madame was of course as she naturally would be,--making her toilet
and looking at the Mulet," said Vinet.

In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said
everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort
of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English
hypocrisy,--one of those products against which custom-houses are
powerless.

"Don't interrupt the orator," repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet,
with whom she exchanged a smile.

"My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in which the
stranger had slept the night before. I don't know what time he went to
bed, although I was awake till past midnight; but I have the