There were some, then, that were more unfortunate than myself! This egoistic thought brought back the pity that had vanished from my heart. "Listen, my little Louise," I said, in a voice which I tried to make as tender and convincing as possible. "Places in Paris are very hard. One has to know many things, and the masters are more exacting than elsewhere. I am much afraid for you. If I were you, I would go home again." But Louise became frightened. "No, no," she exclaimed, "never! I do not want to go home. They would say that I had not succeeded, that nobody wanted me; they would laugh at me too much. No, no, it is impossible; I would rather die!" Just then the door of the ante-room opened. The shrill voice of Mme. Paulhat-Durand called: "Mademoiselle Louise Randon!" "Are they calling me?" asked Louise, frightened and trembling. "Why, yes, it is you. Go quickly, and try to succeed this time." She arose, gave me a dig in the ribs with her outstretched elbows, stepped on my feet, ran against the table, and, rolling along on her too short legs, disappeared, followed by hoots. I mounted my stool, and pushed open the casement-window, to watch the scene that was about to take place. Never did Mme. Paulhat-Durand's _salon_ seem to me gloomier; yet God knows whether it had frozen my soul, every time I had entered it. Oh! that furniture upholstered in blue rep, turned yellow by wear; that huge book of record spread like the split carcass of a beast, on the table, also covered with blue rep spotted with ink. And that desk, where M. Louis's elbows had left bright and shining spots on the dark wood. And the sideboard at the rear, upon which stood foreign glassware, and table-ware handed down from ancestors. And on the mantel, between two lamps which had lost their bronze, between photographs that had lost their color, that tiresome clock, whose enervating tic-tac made the hours longer. And that dome-shaped cage in which two homesick canaries swelled their damaged plumage. And that mahogany case of pigeon-holes, scratched by greedy nails. But I had not taken my post of observation for the purpose of taking an inventory of this room, which I knew, alas! too well,--this lugubrious interior, so tragic, in spite of its _bourgeois_ obscurity, that many times my maddened imagination transformed it into a gloomy butcher-shop for the sale of human meat. No; I wanted to see Louise Randon, in the clutches of the slave-traders.