made a very fair thing of the second-hand clothes. It was to Touquet's
that the tradesmen of the quarter turned as a matter of course to hire
dress-suits for their nuptials; it was in the well-cleaned satins of
Touquet that the brides' mothers and the lady guests cut such imposing
figures when they were photographed after the wedding breakfasts; it
was even Touquet who sometimes supplied a gown to one or another of the
humble actresses at the Theatre Montmartre, and received a couple of
free tickets in addition to his fee. I tell you that Touquet was not a
person to be sneezed at, though he had passed the first flush of youth,
and was never an Adonis.

Besides, who was she, this little Lisette, who had the impudence to
flout him? A girl in a florist's, if you can believe me, with no
particular beauty herself, and not a son by way of dot! And yet--one
must confess it--she turned a head as swiftly as she made a
"buttonhole"; and Pomponnet, the pastrycook, was paying court to her,
too--to say nothing of the homage of messieurs Tricotrin, the poet, and
Goujaud, the painter, and Lajeunie, the novelist. You would never have
guessed that her wages were only twenty francs a week, as you watched
her waltz with Tricotrin at the ball on Saturday evening, or as you saw
her enter Pomponnet's shop, when the shutters were drawn, to feast on
his strawberry tarts. Her costumes were the cynosure of the boulevard
Rochechouart!

And they were all due to Touquet, Touquet the infatuated, who lent the
fine feathers to her for the sake of a glance, or a pressure of the
hand--and wept on his counter afterwards while he wondered whose arms
might be embracing her in the costumes that he had cleaned and pressed
with so much care. Often he swore that his folly should end--that she
should be affianced to him, or go shabby; but, lo! in a day or two she