"One doesn't need the earth in order to eat and sleep."
"N-no; but how much is this luxury of the Rue St. Jacques?" he inquired.
"It is four hundred francs, I believe." She heaved a sigh of regret. It seemed a large sum of money to Mlle. Fouchette.
"Four hundred a year? Only four hundred a year! Parbleu! And now what can one get for four hundred a year, ma petite Fouchette?"
"S-sh! monsieur,—a good deal!" she exclaimed, smiling at his naïveté. With all his patronizing airs she instinctively felt that this man who treated her as if she were a child was really a provincial who needed both mother and business agent.
"I'd like to see it, anyhow," said he.
"At once, monsieur,—so you shall; but it is dear, four hundred francs, when you might get the same at Montrouge for two hundred and fifty francs. Here,—I have the key,—le voilà!"
It was the appartement of three rooms next door to her chamber, which seemed to have been cut off from it as something superfluous in the Rue St. Jacques.
"Why—and Monsieur de Beauchamp is——"
"Gone."