“That elegant lady, who just went out, sir; she came to make some inquiries about M. Gerdy. She gave me twenty francs for answering her questions. It seems that the gentleman is going to be married; and she was evidently much annoyed about it. Superb creature! I have an idea that she is his mistress. I know now why he goes out every night.”
“M. Gerdy?”
“Yes, sir, but I never mentioned it to you, because he seemed to wish to hide it. He never asks me to open the door for him, no, not he. He slips out by the little stable door. I have often said to myself, ‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to disturb me; it is very thoughtful on his part, and he seems to enjoy it so.’”
The concierge spoke with his eyes fixed on the gold piece. When he raised his head to examine the countenance of his lord and master, old Tabaret had disappeared.
“There’s another!” said the concierge to himself. “I’ll bet a hundred sous, that he’s running after the superb creature! Run ahead, go it, old dotard, you shall have a little bit, but not much, for it’s very expensive!”
The concierge was right. Old Tabaret was running after the lady in the blue brougham.
“She will tell me all,” he thought, and with a bound he was in the street. He reached it just in time to see the blue brougham turn the corner of the Rue St. Lazare.
“Heavens!” he murmured. “I shall lose sight of her, and yet she can tell me the truth.”
He was in one of those states of nervous excitement which engender prodigies. He ran to the end of the Rue St. Lazare as rapidly as if he had been a young man of twenty.
Joy! He saw the blue brougham a short distance from him in the Rue du Havre, stopped in the midst of a block of carriages.