Being before all else a thrifty soul, she had conceived the idea of increasing her monthly income by letting out three of the rooms she did not want, and as there were two doors to her flat she was able to give this small suite a separate entrance. The almost elegant furniture it contained had come to her as a weird inheritance. For ten years she had been the mistress of a madman, whose family, desiring for some reason to keep this insanity secret, had paid her well. Upon her unhappy lover's death, Malvina had, according to promise, received twenty thousand francs and the contents of the house in which she had played such a strange part. This woman's dark and hideous past René was never to know. In that gay city, where clandestine attachments abound, how many of the thoughtless youths who hire such places know aught of the history of those who pander to their wants? Nor could the poet think for one moment that this woman with the irreproachable manners had seen right through his demands at the first glance. He had told her that he lived in Versailles, and that he was obliged to come to Paris two or three times a week. The name he gave her was that of his favourite hero--the paradoxical d'Albert in 'Mademoiselle de Maupin;' but as he wrote it at the bottom of the agreement which the careful Madame Raulet got him to sign, he placed his hat on the table, and there the crafty landlady could plainly read the real initials of her new lodger. 'If you would like my servant to undertake the cleaning of the rooms,' she said, 'it will be fifty francs a month extra.' This exorbitant demand was made in such a cool tone, and Madame Raulet, moreover, looked so thoroughly respectable, that René dared not discuss the amount. He could, however, not help eyeing her somewhat distrustfully. Her appearance, it was true, disarmed all suspicion. She wore a dark dress, well but simply made. Round her neck hung one of those long gold chains so much worn at one time by the French _bourgeoisie_--a chain which had no doubt once belonged to her sainted mother. She wore her watch in her belt; a brooch containing a lock of white hair--that of a beloved father, most probably--fastened her neat lace collar, and through the meshes of the silk mittens that covered her long hands might be seen her wedding ring. As René was leaving, this virtuous creature remarked, 'The house is a very quiet one, sir. You are a young man,' she added with a smile, 'and you will not be offended if I make so bold as to say that the least noise on the stairs at night, or anything like that, would be sufficient reason for my asking you to leave.'