She knows and admires Noemie, and she told me what I have just repeated." A month elapsed without M.Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every morning read two or three suicides in the "Figaro," began to suspect that, mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his wounded pride in the waters of the Seine.

He had a note of M.Nioche's address in his pocket-book, and finding himself one day in the quartier, he determined in so far as he might to clear up his doubts.

He repaired to the house in the Rue St.Roch which bore the recorded number, and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a dangling row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy of Bellegarde's informant--a sallow person in a dressing-gown--peering into the street as if she were expecting that amiable nobleman to pass again.

But it was not to her that Newman applied; he simply asked of the portress if M.Nioche were at home.

The portress replied, as the portress invariably replies, that her lodger had gone out barely three minutes before; but then, through the little square hole of her lodge-window taking the measure of Newman's fortunes, and seeing them, by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places of servitude to occupants of fifth floors on courts, she added that M.Nioche would have had just time to reach the Cafe de la Patrie, round the second corner to the left, at which establishment he regularly spent his afternoons.