"They were called petites maisons (little houses). This neighbourhood was full of them. Some stiff things took place in them, and no mistake!"
The commission of inquiry had become very attentive. The two commercial men's eyes were shining, and they smiled and looked with great interest at these gardens and pavilions, on which they had not bestowed a glance prior to their colleague's explanations. A grotto detained them for a long time. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by the pick, said that he recognised it as the Count de Savigny's petite maison, well known on account of that nobleman's orgies, the whole commission left the Boulevard to go and visit the ruins. They climbed on to the fallen materials, entered the ground floor rooms by the windows, and as the workmen were away at their mid-day meal, they were able to linger there quite at their ease. They indeed remained there for a good half hour, examining the rosettes of the ceilings, the paintings above the doors, the strained mouldings of the plaster grown yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the building.
"Do you see," said he, "this room must be the banqueting hall. There was certainly an immense divan in that recess of the wall. And, indeed, I'm sure that a looking-glass surmounted the divan. See, there are the holdfasts of the glass. Oh! those fellows were scamps who knew deucedly well how to enjoy themselves!"
The jurors would never have left these old stones which tickled their curiosity, if Aristide Saccard, growing impatient, had not said to them, laughing:
"You may look as much as you like, the ladies are no longer here. Let's get to our business."
Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed on to a mantelshelf, to delicately detach, with one blow of a pick, a little painted head of Cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his frock-coat.
They at length reached the end of their journey. The land which had formerly belonged to Madame Aubertot was very vast; the music-hall and the garden occupied barely more than half of the surface; a few unimportant houses were scattered about the rest of it. The new Boulevard cut obliquely across this large parallelogram, and this circumstance had quieted one of Saccard's fears; he had long imagined that only a corner of the music-hall would be removed by the new thoroughfare. Larsonneau therefore had received orders to open his mouth, as the bordering plots ought to at least quintuple in value. He was already threatening the city of Paris to avail himself of a recent decree authorising landowners to deliver up only the ground necessary for works of public utility.
It was the expropriation agent who received the jurors. He took them over the garden, made them visit the music-hall and showed them a huge pile of papers. But the two commercial men had gone down again accompanied by the doctor, whom they were still questioning about Count de Savigny's petite maison, of which their minds were full. They listened to him with gaping mouths, standing all three beside a jeu de tonneau. And he talked to them about La Pompadour, and related the amours of Louis XV., while Monsieur de Mareuil and Saccard continued the inquiry alone.
"It's all finished," said the latter on returning into the garden. "If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will myself draw up the report."
The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the Regency.