"I fought very hard with him; but I could not make him give way the least in the world!"
"Why, it is regularly picking my pocket!"
"So it is; but there is no help for it; you will have to give him what he asks, and he will quit immediately: in four-and-twenty hours he will be out of the house, bag and baggage."
"Well, here then! here is a bank-note for 1000 francs, and another for 500 francs; you will pay six months in advance, and account to me for the rest."
"Ah, sir, you will find yourself ever so much more quiet and comfortable when you have all the house to yourself. As for me, I shall not feel a bit more timid, although we have got no porter;—but la! I never dreaded thieves, no, nor ghosts either, for that matter."
"And, besides, though this neighbourhood is somewhat lonely, it is a very safe one."
"And there is the soldier on duty, at the corner of the street, who can watch our house as he sits in his sentry-box."
"Now, then, my good Madame Grassot, make quick work with your second-floor lodger, pack him off as soon as possible. I long to have the place all to myself."
"By the day after to-morrow, I pledge myself you shall find no one here. Well, good luck to us all! I know whom I should like to see occupy this house as soon as the second-floor lodger has left. But I know, monsieur, and I feel sure it will be as I wish some of these days; without my reminding him, when once monsieur determines to do a thing handsome, he never forgets, never——"
"You are a regular flatterer, Madame Grassot," cried M. de Brévannes, as he complacently smiled upon his emissary, and quitted the small dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs.