"In the country, or here?"
"Sapristi! tell me what you mean, concierge: is Mademoiselle Crémailly still in the country, or has she come back to Paris?"
"She's there, she's there!"
"Very well, then I'll go up. Still on the fourth?"
"She's there!"
"Heavens! what a donkey that concierge is! one would say he was a parrot—repeating the same thing over and over again."
"I'm beginning to get infernally tired of this!" said Chamoureau to himself; "altogether too many people come to this house. The deuce! now it's raining great guns! and my cab doesn't come! Can it be that there wasn't one on the square? that's usually the way when it rains hard. O Freluchon! you shall pay me for this! The rascal probably went home with his Pompadour!"
Soon a lady's maid appeared at the window.
"Madame's paper, please, Monsieur Mignon," she said. "I am a little late—not that madame's hair is dressed yet, but I must have time to read the paper before she does, as usual; especially as there's a most intensely exciting feuilleton just now. It's too splendid for anything, I tell you: four killed already, and one that they're getting ready to poison! and a woman who always has a dagger hidden in her belt! and a château where there are subterranean vaults with instruments of torture, and the author describes the way of using them! There's an interesting executioner and there's corpses and tortured people on every page! Oh! such a lovely novel! Now that's what I call literature, and I know what I'm talking about; I don't read all this mawkish stuff, not me! I want a crime, a murder, in every chapter; then I say: 'there's an author who has a wonderful talent and who has studied murders to some purpose.'—But look here! I believe you're not listening to me! And where's my paper? God bless my soul! he's still asleep! Well, I'll come in and get it myself."