"Oh! it is indeed he, Monsieur," she said again, while Zilah watched her
and listened in silence. "I don't like to have him use pseudonyms, as he
calls them. It gives me so much pleasure to see his real name, which is
mine too, printed in full. Only it seems that it is better sometimes.
Puck makes people curious, and they say, Who can it be? He also signed
himself Gavroche in the Rabelais, you know, which did not last very long.
You are perhaps a journalist also, Monsieur?"

"No," said Zilah.

"Ah! I thought you were! But, after all, perhaps you are right. It is a
hard profession, I sometimes think. You have to be out so late. If you
only knew, Monsieur, how poor Paul is forced to work even at night!
It tires him so, and then it costs so much. I beg your pardon for
leaving those gloves like that before you. I was cleaning them. He does
not like cleaned gloves, though; he says it always shows. Well, I am a
woman, and I don't notice it. And then I take so much care of all that.
It is necessary, and everything costs so dear. You see I--Gustave, don't
slap your little sister! you naughty boy!"

And going to the children, her sweet, frank eyes becoming sad at a
quarrel between her little ones, she gently took the baby away from the
oldest child, who cried, and went into a corner to pout, regarding his
mother with the same impudent air which Zilah had perceived in the curl
of Jacquemin's lips when the reporter complained of the dearth of pretty
women.

"It is certainly very astonishing that he does not come home," continued
the young wife, excusing to Zilah the absence of her Paul. "He often