—Ah, how happy you gentlemen are to snatch in this way pretty little souls from hell. We, poor women, have not that power.
—But you prepare the ways. You open them, dear Madame Connard; everything has its purpose, its purpose, its purpose.
—Well, Monsieur Tibulle, proceed to yours. It is number 10. I leave you.
And she quietly half-opened the door of No. 10, into which Monsieur glided like a shadow, saying in his tremulous voice:
—Eh! Eh! it is I, I, I, my little dear. How happy I am to see you again, to find you here, comfortably installed like a little queen. Eh, eh.
Madame Connard put her head in for an instant, smiled, and cautiously closed the door; "He is still pretty young for his age," she said to herself. "Ah, these men! these men! that goes on to the very end."
XCI.
THE CALVES.
"Non formosus erat sed erat facundus Ulixes."