"I only ask you to lend me this letter until tomorrow."
"There it is, neighbor; but you will take good care of it? I have burned all the billets doux which M. Cabrion and M. Girandeau wrote me at the commencement of our acquaintance, with bleeding hearts and doves on the top of the paper; but this poor letter of Germain, I will take good care of; it and others also, if he writes them. For, in truth M. Rudolph, it is a proof in my favor that he asks these little services."
"Without doubt it proves that you are the best little friend that one can have. But I reflect—instead of going by and by alone to M. Germain's, shall I accompany you?"
"With pleasure, neighbor. Night approaches, and I prefer not to be alone in the streets after dark, especially as I have to go near the Palais Royal. But to go so far will be tiresome and fatiguing to you, perhaps?"
"Not at all; we will take a hack."
"Really! Oh, how it would amuse me to go in a carriage, if I had not so much sorrow. And I must have sorrow, for this is the first day since I lived here that I have not sung. My birds are all astonished. Poor little things! they do not know what it means; two or three times Papa Cretu has sung a little to entice me. I wished to amuse him; but after a moment I began to weep; Ramonette then tried, but I could answer no more."
[Illustration: MENACED IN PRISON]
"What singular names you have given your birds—Papa Cretu, Ramonette?"
"M. Rudolph, my birds are the joy of my solitude; they are my best friends. I have given them the names of good people who were the joy of my childhood, my best friends. Without reckoning, to finish the resemblance, that Papa Cretu and Ramonette were as gay and tuneful as the birds of heaven. My adopted parents were thus called. They are ridiculous names for birds, I know; but it only concerns me. Now, it was on this very subject that I saw Germain had a good heart."
"He had, eh?"