father's place. By receiving my friends, by keeping up all this

connection, by contracting these debts, I have secured their future
welfare; I have prepared for them a brilliantcareer where they will

find help and favor; and to have what has thus been acquired, many a
man of business, lawyer or banker, would gladly pay all it has cost

me."
"I appreciate your devoted conduct, madame," replied Popinot. "It does

you honor, and I blame you for nothing. A judge belongs to all: he
must know and weigh every fact."

Madame d'Espard's tact and practice in estimating men made her
understand that M. Popinot was not to be influenced by any

consideration. She had counted on an ambitiouslawyer, she had found a
man of conscience. She at once thought of finding other means for

securing the success of her side.
The servants brought in tea.

"Have you any further explanations to give me, madame?" said Popinot,
seeing these preparations.

"Monsieur," she replied haughtily, "do your business your own way;
question M. d'Espard, and you will pity me, I am sure." She raised her

head, looking Popinot in the face with pride, mingled with
impertinence; the worthy man bowed himself out respectfully.

"A nice man is your uncle," said Rastignac to Bianchon. "Is he really
so dense? Does not he know what the Marquise d'Espard is, what her

influence means, her unavowed power over people? The Keeper of the
Seals will be with her to-morrow----"

"My dear fellow, how can I help it?" said Bianchon. "Did not I warn
you? He is not a man you can get over."

"No," said Rastignac; "he is a man you must run over."
The doctor was obliged to make his bow to the Marquise and her mute

Chevalier to catch up Popinot, who, not being the man to endure an
embarrassing position, was pacing through the rooms.

"That woman owes a hundred thousand crowns," said the judge, as he
stepped into his nephew's cab.

"And what do you think of the case?"
"I," said the judge. "I never have an opinion till I have gone into

everything. To-morrow early I will send to Madame Jeanrenaud to call
on me in my private office at four o'clock, to make her explain the

facts which concern her, for she is compromised."
"I should very much like to know what the end will be."

"Why, bless me, do not you see that the Marquise is the tool of that
tall lean man who never uttered a word? There is a strain of Cain in

him, but of the Cain who goes to the Law Courts for his bludgeon, and
there, unluckily for him, we keep more than one Damocles' sword."

"Oh, Rastignac! what brought you into that boat, I wonder?" exclaimed
Bianchon.

"Ah, we are used to seeing these little family conspiracies," said
Popinot. "Not a year passes without a number of verdicts of

'insufficient evidence' against applications of this kind. In our
state of society such an attempt brings no dishonor, while we send a

poor devil to the galleys who breaks a pane of glass dividing him from
a bowl full of gold. Our Code is not faultless."

"But these are the facts?"
"My boy, do you not know all the judicial romances with which clients

impose on their attorneys? If the attorneys condemned themselves to
state nothing but the truth, they would not earn enough to keep their

office open."
Next day, at four in the afternoon, a very stout dame, looking a good

deal like a cask dressed up in a gown and belt, mounted Judge
Popinot's stairs, perspiring and panting. She had, with great

difficulty, got out of a green landau, which suited her to a miracle;
you could not think of the woman without the landau, or the landau

without the woman.
"It is I, my dear sir," said she, appearing in the doorway of the

judge's room. "Madame Jeanrenaud, whom you summoned exactly as if I
were a thief, neither more nor less."

The common words were spoken in a common voice, broken by the wheezing
of asthma, and ending in a cough.

"When I go through a damp place, I can't tell you what I suffer, sir.
I shall never make old bones, saving your presence. However, here I

am."
The lawyer was quite amazed at the appearance of this supposed

Marechale d'Ancre. Madame Jeanrenaud's face was pitted with an
infinite number of little holes, was very red, with a pug nose and a

low forehead, and was as round as a ball; for everything about the
good woman was round. She had the bright eyes of a country woman, an

honest gaze, a cheerful tone, and chestnut hair held in place by a
bonnet cap under a green bonnet decked with a shabby bunch of

auriculas. Her stupendous bust was a thing to laugh at, for it made
one fear some grotesqueexplosion every time she coughed. Her enormous

legs were of the shape which make the Paris street boy describe such a
woman as being built on piles. The widow wore a green gown trimmed

with chinchilla, which looked on her as a splash of dirty oil would
look on a bride's veil. In short, everything about her harmonized with

her last words: "Here I am."
"Madame," said Popinot, "you are suspected of having used some

seductive arts to induce M. d'Espard to hand over to you very
considerable sums of money."

"Of what! of what!" cried she. "Of seductive arts? But, my dear sir,
you are a man to be respected, and, moreover, as a lawyer you ought to

have some good sense. Look at me! Tell me if I am likely to seduce any
one. I cannot tie my own shoes, nor even stoop. For these twenty years

past, the Lord be praised, I have not dared to put on a pair of stays
under pain of sudden death. I was as thin as an asparagus stalk when I

was seventeen, and pretty too--I may say so now. So I married
Jeanrenaud, a good fellow, and headman on the salt-barges. I had my

boy, who is a fine young man; he is my pride, and it is not holding
myself cheap to say he is my best piece of work. My little Jeanrenaud

was a soldier who did Napoleon credit, and who served in the Imperial
Guard. But, alas! at the death of my old man, who was drowned, times

changed for the worse. I had the smallpox. I was kept two years in my
room without stirring, and I came out of it the size you see me,

hideous for ever, and as wretched as could be. These are my seductive
arts."

"But what, then, can the reasons be that have induced M. d'Espard to
give you sums----"

"Hugious sums, monsieur, say the word; I do not mind. But as to his
reasons, I am not at liberty to explain them."

"You are wrong. At this moment, his family, very naturally alarmed,
are about to bring an action----"

"Heavens above us!" said the good woman, starting up. "Is it possible
that he should be worried on my account? That king of men, a man that

has not his match! Rather than he should have the smallest trouble, or
hair less on his head I could almost say, we would return every sou,

monsieur. Write that down on your papers. Heaven above us! I will go
at once and tell Jeanrenaud what is going on! A pretty thing indeed!"

And the little old woman went out, rolled herself downstairs, and
disappeared.

"That one tells no lies," said Popinot to himself. "Well, to-morrow I
shall know the whole story, for I shall go to see the Marquis

d'Espard."
People who have outlived the age when a man wastes his vitality at

random, know how great an influence may be exercised on more important
events by apparentlytrivial incidents, and will not be surprised at

the weight here given to the following minor fact. Next day Popinot
had an attack of coryza, a complaint which is not dangerous, and

generally known by the absurd and inadequate name of a cold in the
head.

The judge, who could not suppose that the delay could be serious,
feeling himself a little feverish, kept his room, and did not go to