"Ruin and disgrace!"

"Yes, Maria. There is one dreadful secret I have never confided to you, to you, my own true wife, the companion of my early poverty, and in whose bosom I have reposed all my cares and troubles,—all but this terrible one, which now hangs over me and threatens to crush me."

"Jasper Goldthorpe," his wife said, with something like dignity in her homely way," to me you have always been a good and faithful husband; to me you have always acted as an honest man. Why should I think that you would do the thing that isn't right to others? When one's a rogue at home, one's generally a rogue abroad. Come, now, Goldie dear, tell me what it's all about."

"I cannot, I dare not, Maria. I should blush to do so. I tremble to speak about the awful thing, for fear that the very walls might have ears."

"Walls have ears, Sir Jasper," a voice close behind the Baronet said; " and so have people behind parlour-doors; and pretty sharp ones too."

The voice belonged to Filoe and Co., of Coger's Inn; the voice belonged to Mr. Sims, of London, Paris, and the World generally. And Mr. Sims had knocked a soft rat-tat at the street-door, while the bankrupt baronet and his wife were in conversation,-Magdalen was away-gone in quest of work, she had said, in her proud way,—and after a brief parley on the door-mat, ending with his slipping a five-shilling piece into the landlady's hand,-a great outlay for the usually economical Mr. Sims,— he had been permitted to remain in ambush for a few minutes in the narrow little passage; had doubtless-thanks to a flimsy lodging-house parlour-door and his sharp ears-heard the concluding part of the colloquy between Sir Jasper and Lady Goldthorpe, and now entered the room, cool, confident, and suggestive of no science being to him a mystery.

But when Lady Goldthorpe turned round at the entrance of the unexpected visitor, it was not as Mr. Sims or as Mr. Filoe that she addressed him. She stared at him in blank amazement; she suppressed a rising shriek, and lifting up her hands, and sinking into her chair, the good woman murmured, "Hugh Desborough, my husband's old partner, by all that's wonderful!"

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE AGONY OF FLORENCE ARMYTAGE: STAGE THE FIRST.

A BRIGHT day in Paris is, perhaps, the brightest that can be seen any where in the world; and it was the brightest, the sunniest, and the cheeriest that Lutetia had known for many months-this June morning. It was so bright that the sun turned the crooks of the rag-pickers into gold, and tipped with silver the strips of iron, and fragments of saucepanlids, and nails, and boot-heels twinkling in their baskets. 'It was so bright that the Morgue, that gruesome dead-house, looked quite classical and picturesque, a little temple of antiquity, with the ashes of dead heroes

inside, instead of a dank and dismal charnel-place, where the livid corpses lie on the stone slabs, a wonder and a horror to the sight-seers. It was so bright that the bayonets of a regiment of infantry marching down the Rue de Rivoli flashed and glittered in the sunlight like a cheveaux-defrise of diamonds. Of course the nursemaids in the Palais Royal, and the plump Normandy nurses outside the Café de Paris, took advantage of the occasion to hire chairs at two sous an hour, and sun themselves, with their young charges, to the admiration of all passers-by, especially the redlegged warriors attached to the garrison at Paris. Of course the little girls in the great quadrangle of the Palace aforesaid, and in the Tuileries Gardens, those wonderful little Parisian children, with scragged-up hair, vandyked trousers, black-silk pinafores, who are coquettes in their cradles, and flirts in their leading-strings,-avail themselves of the sunshine to indulge in more than ordinarily graceful and elaborate gymnastic exercises as connected with the skipping-rope. Of course while they skipped they looked round for the customary murmur of applause never denied, and quite as gratifying to their little eyes and ears, whether it proceeded from the toothless old gentlemen sipping their morning coffee, and reading their tiny rags of newspapers outside the Café de la Rotonde, or from the ingenuous provincials in blouses, sabots, and red-tasselled nightcaps, who were loitering about to see the Guard paraded, and the sundial cannon fired by Phoebus' rays at high noon. It was so bright and sunny, that the five hundred thousand ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do in Paris all the year round began to do it with all their minds and with all their strength, that the rattling of dominoes, the clinking of glasses, the clattering of billiard-cues, the shuffling of cards, began to be heard an hour earlier than usual,—and that the fumes of prematurely matutinal cigars curled blue in the morning sunshine from at least two hundred and fifty thousand pairs of happy idle lips. It was so bright and sunny, that you forgot the beggars, with their rags and their sores, on the Parvis. Notre-Dame, and the steps of St. Roche (ye beggars, ye have been swept away under the Imperial dispensation !),—that you forgot the gutters, and the discordant cries of the old-clothes men, and the dust and ashes which the house-porters persisted in sweeping over your clean boots,-that you forgot there was a great deal of want, and a great deal of misery, and a great deal of vice, a great deal of crime, in this teeming city of Paris. Sol lucet omnibus. The sun made amends for all. The sun made the beggar rich, and bade the cripple forget his hurts, and the paralytic that he was bed-ridden, and the debtor that he was in Clichy, and the pickpocket that the spies were on his track, and the gamin that his dinner was problematical, and the sempstress that she was making shirts for forty sous a dozen. The sun was meat to the famished, and drink to those who were athirst, and lodging to the houseless. So it must have been in all times, I fancy, in this wonderful city, whose dark shadows only looked the blacker by the dazzling sunshine which contrasts with them. There must have been sunny mornings during the Reign of Terror, when Robespierre enjoyed

VOL. III.

G G

his breakfast and Fouquier-Tinville smiled, when the procession of the tumbrils down the Rue St.-Honoré must have looked quite a glittering pageant; and the sun must have shone so on the red guillotine, on the Place of the Revolution, that you could scarcely distinguish it from a galante show in the neighbouring Elysian fields.

Sol lucet omnibus. Every where the sun shone, and for all ;-for the Ministers of the Republic in their cabinets; for the students in the taverns and coffee-houses of the Latin Quarter; for the grisettes in their garrets, the soldiers in their barracks, the mountebanks in their booths, the great dames of the Faubourg St.-Germains in their boudoirs, the artisans in their workrooms, the cobblers and umbrella-menders in their underground cabins. The sun brought many innocent youths, between the ages of six and twelve, in the divers schools and colleges at Paris, to grief, prompting them as it did to catch its rays in burning-glasses, and so perforate copy-books supplied to them by their pastors and masters. Yes, the sun shone in all places and for all, save in the tomb and for its inmates. There all was dark enough as usual. In two notable places it shone this morning in the month of June. First, it streamed gallantly and defiantly into a splendid suite of rooms in the Rue Grandedes-Petites-Maisons, and through a stained casement into a sumptuous little boudoir, and upon a man lolling on a luxurious ottoman, and who was dressed to all substantial seeming in plain burgess's apparel, but who figuratively, and curiously enough, wore his heart upon his sleeve.

Our old friend Simon Lefranc! the genial, airy, volatile child of Gaul (was he a child of Gaul?); the ex-commercial traveller in the corsettrade; the ex-denizen of the Monmouth Chambers, Soho; the ex-paillasse who had looked through the coffee-room window; the ex-dandy who had met with Inspector Millament and Sergeant South on the Bridge of Waterloo; the ex-Count Somebody, in curly black wig, who had been so welcome a guest at the entertainment of the Baroness Dela Haute Gueuse; the present Papa Lallouet;-Simon Lefranc, call him what you will.

Simon was quite at home, a man of the world; and in it he could accommodate himself to any circumstances in life; but the present were, to tell truth, somewhat snug, somewhat cozy, not to say luxurious circumstances. Simon never exceeded, he was too wary for that, but he certainly enjoyed himself thoroughly. A nice succulent little breakfast was laid out before him. The remains of some truffled turkey, the crust of a slice of Strasbourg pie, the bones of some cutlets, some oyster-shells warranted Ostend, a champagne-cork, and the lees of a right good bottle of Chambertin, showed that he had known during the last half-hour how to appreciate the good things of this life. And now Simon's demie tasse, and Simon's petite verre, had been brought him by an obsequious bonne; and Simon himself, producing from his cigarcase a lengthy and fragrant Trabuco, did not look, as he sipped and he puffed the goods with which the gods had provided him, in the least like

the same Simon who was a traveller to a stay-maker, and associated with the half-starved inhabitants of a model lodging-house, that had lost his all in disastrous speculations, and was obliged to pinch himself now for the sake of his little Adela.

And while Simon so sipped and puffed he meditated; but whether his thoughts ran in the French or the English language, it concerns me not to tell. Who can? For aught you know, your seemingly English neighbour may be thinking in Swedish, or Slavonian, or Mauri, or the one primeval language known only to himself; as poor Hartley Coleridge used to declare that he thought in the language of the Eujaxrians, his self-created tongue. When I am excited, I think in Teloogoo; and does not Rabelais tell us of a nation who saw with their ears and understood with their elbows? So I will use the romancer's privilege, and translate Simon Lefranc's meditations into indifferent English.

"There never was," he thought, "such an artful baffling little minx; she is almost too clever even for me. Where are those papers? What has she done with them? She has defied that most sagacious Mrs. Skinner, whose fingers are like corkscrews, and whose eyes like probesa searcher at Scotland Yard. She has defied even our paragon La Mère Camuse at the Prefecture, that dauntless woman who would take the skin off a blackamoor, if there was any thing to be found underneath; who would take all the teeth out of your head, if there was any thing worth finding in the cavities. But Mrs. Skinner and La Mère Camuse can do nothing with her; they have turned her, so to speak, inside out. I myself, and Reflard my man,-bah! half-a-dozen men,-have ransacked every table, every drawer, every chair-covering, every feather-bed, every curtain-lining in these fine show-rooms; we have looked behind the mirrors, and under the carpet, and up the chimney; we have found enough, goodness knows, but have yet failed to discover the one thing needful. Now I, Simon Lefranc, flatter myself that I could find out the secret of the Man in the Iron Mask, if that secret remained to be discovered; and yet, so far as this one tiny particular secret is concerned, Florence Armytage masters and defies me, as she has mastered and defied Mrs. Skinner and La Mère Camuse." He rang a little silver bell, -no luxury was deficient in Simon's housekeeping,-which anon was answered by the obsequious bonne. This bonne had never formed part of the household of the lady on the first-floor. She was, like Simon Lefranc, her master, in the pay and the service of the grand master of all of them -the Prefecture. "Send Riflard here."

The bonne curtsied and withdrew.

Soon appeared on the scene Monsieur Riflard, by profession garde de commerce, a catchpole to the civil tribunals; by predilection scamp and spy. Monsieur Riflard wore a long bottle-green surtout, and his countenance was of a bilio-greenish hue, and the nap of his hat had a tinge of green in it; and it was with great difficulty that he could ever be persuaded to release his hold of a green-cotton umbrella; and altogether

Monsieur Riflard, had he had any thing to be jealous of, would have made a very admirable representation of the green-eyed monster.

"Any new discoveries, Riflard?"

"None, master."

"Has the porter's lodge below been searched?"

"Every thing has been searched, master; nothing found but what you have."

"It is well. I am going to the Palace; there is an examination on this morning. We must get the papers from her by fair or by foul means. Meanwhile go on searching. You may play a game of cards, if you are tired; but I should prefer your not getting tipsy, as you did yesterday. Remember, there are those about who will report to me all that has been done. Good-by, and keep your eyes open."

Monsieur Riflard, whose only weakness was absinthe, made a shambling bow of great deference, for Simon was an emperor among his subordinates. Then the chief of the spies took his hat and his cane and his gloves, and proceeded majestically, as beseemed a gentleman of his degree, from the first-floor to the basement, where he found waiting for him a snug little coupé to convey him to the Palace. What Palace? You are shortly to learn.

Simon and his retainers had been in judicial possession of that memorable first-floor for fourteen days, routing amongst its gorgeous furniture, turning up and prying into its cupboards and shelves and cabinets of price, scattering the books in the library, ripping up the draperies, gauging the key-holes almost, for the one absorbing object of their search. They were still seeking, and had not yet found. They lived on the very best, for Simon had command of abundant funds. They drank of the very choicest, for the cellar of the lady on the first-floor was abundantly furnished with rare vintages and curious seals. Oddly enough, 'twas found on inquiry that she who owed money almost every where, and had defrauded almost every soul with whom she came in contact, had paid the rent of this place with undeviating punctuality. "She was the best of lodgers," quoth the concierge, "the best and most generous at Easter and the New Year." Pauvre petite dame! the concierge pitied her, and it was something to be pitied even by a porter. He and his wife, and the keeper of the cafe over the way, and the proprietor of the wine-shop at the corner, knew very well that Simon and his men were on the first-floor, and what they were there for. Beyond that, nobody in or out of the house, in that neighbourhood at least, knew any thing about the matter. You may live a hundred years in a house at Paris without being aware in the slightest degree of whom your next neighbour may be. Our famous firstfloor, our once gay and brilliant abode of mirth and wit and feasting and splendour, our bygone haunt of fair women and brave men, our fairy court of beauty and intellect, of which the little sovereign with her golden hair throned it in so queenly a manner, our first-floor of the Rue Grandedes-Petites-Maisons,-what are you now, and where is your lady?