"You shall ascend, monsieur," he said. "I do not know who you are, but you are evidently a very wonderful person. We will ascend and you shall wait while I place my head in cold water and Susanne mixes me some absinthe. Then I will listen."
The automobile came to a standstill about halfway down a shabby street in a somewhat shabby neighborhood. Herr Freudenberg noticed this fact without change of countenance, but with secret pleasure. He turned to Marguerite.
"Dear Marguerite," he whispered, "for an hour or so I must leave you. You will permit that my man takes you to your apartments and returns for me here?"
"May I not wait for you here in the automobile?" she asked timidly.
Herr Freudenberg shook his head kindly.
"Dear little one," he murmured, "not this morning. Indeed, I have important affairs on hand. As soon as I am free, I will telephone. Sleep well, little girl."
He stepped out on to the pavement. The postern door in front of them was opened, in response to Monsieur Jesen's vigorous knocking, from some invisible place by a string. The three of them climbed four flights of rickety stairs. They reached at last a stone landing. Monsieur Jesen threw open a door and led the way into an untidy-looking salon.
"Monsieur will forgive the fact," he begged, "that I am not better housed. If it were not for little Susanne here," he added, patting her upon the shoulder, "I doubt whether I should keep a roof above my head at all."
"It is not like this," Herr Freudenberg declared, "that genius should be treated."
"Indeed," Mademoiselle Susanne intervened, "it is what I tell him always. Monsieur, they pay him but a beggarly three hundred francs a month—he, who writes all the editorials; he, who is the spirit of the papers! It is not fair. I tell dear Paul that it is wicked, and, as he says, the money, if it were not for me, he would squander it in a minute. I have even to go with him to the office, for there are many who know when Paul draws his little cheque."