one who might very probably have heard something of them. They settled
that Madame Babette must believe that the Marquise and Clement were dead;
and admired her for her reticence in never speaking of Virginie. The
truth was, I suspect, that she was so desirous of her nephews success by
this time, that she did not like letting any one into the secret of
Virginie's whereabouts who might interfere with their plan. However, it
was arranged between Clement and his humble friend, that the former,
dressed in the peasant's clothes in which he had entered Paris, but
smartened up in one or two particulars, as if, although a countryman, he
had money to spare, should go and engage a sleeping-room in the old
Breton Inn; where, as I told you, accommodation for the night was to be
had. This was accordingly done, without exciting Madame Babette's
suspicions, for she was unacquainted with the Normandy accent, and
consequently did not perceive the exaggeration of it which Monsieur de
Crequy adopted in order to disguise his pure Parisian. But after he had
for two nights slept in a queer dark closet, at the end of one of the
numerous short galleries in the Hotel Duguesclin, and paid his money for
such accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of
the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood
outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window,
counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a
clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means
of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from
the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt to death every
one who looked like a gentleman, as an aristocrat: and Clement, depend
upon it, looked a gentleman, whatever dress he wore. Yet it was unwise
to traverse Paris to his old friend the gardener's grenier, so he had to
loiter about, where I hardly know. Only he did leave the Hotel
Duguesclin, and he did not go to old Jacques, and there was not another
house in Paris open to him. At the end of two days, he had made out