‘An excellent lady,’ said Glazer, as she left; ‘good and charitable. Would we had many more in Paris like her! And she has hard work, too, at the hospitals at present, as Philippe tells me; some evil demon seems to breathe a lingering sickness into her patients’ frames the minute she takes them under her devoted care.’
Panurge spoke but little, contenting himself with gradually clearing everything digestible that was upon the table; and at last the heavy curfew betokened to Maître Glazer that his usual hour of retiring for the night had arrived. The old man, preceded by his assistant with a lamp, made a careful survey of his establishment, putting out the remnant of fire in his laboratory, and Panurge prepared his couch, which was a species of berth under the counter. From their occupation they were both startled by a second knocking at the door, hurried and violent; and, on challenging the new-comer, a voice without inquired, ‘if Philippe had come in?’
‘My son seems in request to-night,’ said Glazer. ‘That should be the Chevalier de Sainte-Croix’s voice.’
‘You are right, Maître,’ cried Gaudin without, for it was he. ‘Do not disturb yourself. Shall I find your son in his apartment?’
‘I cannot say, monsieur. Madame de Brinvilliers asked the same question but a few minutes since.’
‘She is here, then?’ asked Sainte-Croix with an eagerness that betokened the Marchioness was chiefly concerned in his visit.
‘She crossed the court just now, and has scarcely had time to return.’
‘Enough, Maître Glazer,’ replied Sainte-Croix. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you. Good-night!’
Without waiting for a return of the salutation, Gaudin left the door and hurried along the archway towards the staircase, evidently impelled by no ordinary excitement. He had called that evening upon Madame de Brinvilliers, at her hotel in the Rue des Cordeliers, to seek an interview with her upon the subject of her acquaintance made with Theria at the Jacobins, which since last evening had been rankling in his heart. For some of the busy tongues of Paris had long whispered of a liaison that passed the bounds of friendship, between Gaudin and the Marchioness; nor were the reports unfounded. Sainte-Croix was madly, deeply devoted to her; but jealous at the same time, to a point which rendered every word or look that she bestowed upon another a source of raging torture to his mind. He found the Marchioness had left word with her femme de chambre that she had gone to see Philippe Glazer respecting her hospital patients, whom she was accustomed to serve as a sainte fille; and, knowing that Theria occupied the same flat with the young student, his suspicions were immediately aroused. She had, beyond doubt, made an appointment with him.
With his brain on fire he left the hotel; and rapidly threading the dark and wretched streets that led to the Place Maubert, rather by instinct than the slightest attention to the localities, he reached the porte-cochère by the side of Glazer’s shop. Here he gained the information just alluded to, and immediately proceeded to the floor on which the rooms of the scholars were placed, flying up the stairs three and four at a time, until he came to the landing. There was no light in Glazer’s chamber; he listened, and all was quiet; he was evidently not within. But from Theria’s he thought he heard the murmur of voices proceeding, mingled now and then with light laughter which he recognised; whose sound made his blood boil again. He seized the handle of the sonnette and pulled it violently. In less than half a minute, during which time he was chafing up and down the landing like an infuriated animal, the summons was answered. A small window in the wall was opened, and a female face appeared at it—that of a young and tolerably good-looking woman, apparently belonging to the class of grisettes.