"Admirably. My mother has an interminable lawsuit on hand, and I drop in to see her notary and lawyer occasionally, so I can study the part from nature."
"Very well, follow me, then, and I will introduce you as Gerald Auvernay, clerk to a notary."
"Chief clerk to a notary," corrected Gerald, with great emphasis.
"Come on, ambitious youth!"
Gerald, thanks to Olivier's recommendation, was received by Madame Herbaut with great cordiality.
On the afternoon of that same day grim M. Bouffard called for the rent Commander Bernard owed him. Madame Barbançon paid him, overcoming with great difficulty her strong desire to disfigure the ferocious landlord's face with her nails.
Unfortunately, the money thus obtained, instead of appeasing M. Bouffard's greed, seemed to imbue him with increased energy to collect his dues, and persuaded that, but for his persistent dunning and abuse, Madame Barbançon would not have paid him, he hastened off to the Rue Monceau where Herminie lived, resolved to treat the poor girl with increased severity, and thus secure the payment of the rent she owed him.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE ABODE OF THE DUCHESS.
Herminie lived on the Rue de Monceau in one of the numerous dwellings of which M. Bouffard was the owner. She occupied a room on the ground floor, reached by a small hallway opening under the archway of the porte-cochère. The two windows looked out upon a pretty garden, enclosed on one side by an evergreen hedge, and on the other by a tall lattice that separated it from the adjoining street.
This garden really pertained to a much larger apartment on the ground floor, an apartment which, together with another suite of rooms on the third floor, was unoccupied,—an unpleasant state of things, which considerably increased M. Bouffard's ill-humour towards his delinquent tenants.