'Are those ladies also threatened with some annoyance?' asked Madame Caroline, with anxious sympathy.
He affected ignorance. 'No, I do not think so. I was simply referring to the sad situation in which the Count's misconduct has left them. Yes, I have friends at Vendôme; I know their story.' And as he finally made up his mind to leave the window, he felt, amid the emotion which he feigned, a sudden and singular reaction upon himself. 'And after all,' said he, 'if there were only money losses! But it is when death enters a house!'
This time real tears moistened his eyes. He had just thought of his brother, and was choking. She fancied that he had recently lost a relative, and discreetly refrained from questioning him. She had not been deceived as to the abject calling of this personage who inspired her with such a feeling of repugnance; and these unexpected tears determined her more than his shrewdest tactics would have done; her desire increased to hasten off to the Cité de Naples at once.
'Then, madame, I rely upon you?' said Busch.
'I start immediately,' she answered.
An hour later, having taken a cab, she was wandering about behind the Butte Montmartre, unable to find the Cité. At last, in one of the deserted streets running out of the Rue Marcadet, an old woman pointed it out to the cabman. At the entrance it was like some broken-up country road blocked with mud and refuse, and leading across a tract of waste land. It was only after an attentive glance that you distinguished the miserable shanties, compounded of earth, old boards, and zinc, and looking like heaps of rubbish around the inner courtyard. At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietress, ever on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.
As soon as Madame Caroline had stepped from the cab, she saw La Méchain appear on the threshold, with her enormous figure swaying in an ancient blue silk dress, frayed at the folds and cracked at the seams, and with cheeks so puffy and red that her tiny nose, almost lost to sight, seemed to be cooking between two live coals. At this sight Madame Caroline hesitated, filled with a sudden feeling of uneasiness, but all at once the woman's gentle voice, which had the shrilly charm of a shepherd's pipe, reassured her.
'Ah! madame, Monsieur Busch sends you; you came for little Victor. Come in, come in. Yes, this is really the Cité de Naples. The street is not classified; we have no numbers yet. Come in. We must talk it all over first. Mon Dieu, it is so annoying, it is so sad!'