By about half-past nine, the father, acceding to his daughter's petition, gave her his arm for a walk, and they went along the quays by the Pont Royal to the Place du Carrousel.
"Let us look into the shop windows, papa," said Hortense, as they went through the little gate to cross the wide square.
"What—here?" said her father, laughing at her.
"We are supposed to have come to see the pictures, and over there" —and she pointed to the stalls in front of the houses at a right angle to the Rue du Doyenne—"look! there are dealers in curiosities and pictures——"
"Your cousin lives there."
"I know it, but she must not see us."
"And what do you want to do?" said the Baron, who, finding himself within thirty yards of Madame Marneffe's windows, suddenly remembered her.
Hortense had dragged her father in front of one of the shops forming the angle of a block of houses built along the front of the Old Louvre, and facing the Hotel de Nantes. She went into this shop; her father stood outside, absorbed in gazing at the windows of the pretty little lady, who, the evening before, had left her image stamped on the old beau's heart, as if to alleviate the wound he was so soon to receive; and he could not help putting his wife's sage advice into practice.
"I will fall back on a simple little citizen's wife," said he to himself, recalling Madame Marneffe's adorable graces. "Such a woman as that will soon make me forget that grasping Josepha."
Now, this was what was happening at the same moment outside and inside the curiosity shop.