After having remained twenty years in the service of M. Cloarek's father, at that gentleman's death he transferred his allegiance to the son whom he had known as a child, and whom he served with unwearying devotion. On his entrance, as we have just remarked, he was greeted with mocking laughs and exclamations of-- "Here comes M. Segoffin. Ah, good day, M. Segoffin!" But without losing his habitual _sang-froid_ in the least, he laid his umbrella and hat down on a chair, and, seizing the prettiest of his tormentors in his long arms, kissed her loudly on both cheeks in spite of her shrieks and spirited resistance. Well satisfied with this beginning, he was preparing to repeat the offence when Madame Roberts, seizing him by one of his coat-tails, exclaimed, indignantly: "Segoffin, Segoffin! such behaviour is outrageous!" "That which is done is done," said Segoffin, sententiously, passing his long, bony hand across his lips with an air of retrospective enjoyment, as the young sewing-woman quitted the room with her companions, all laughing like mad and exclaiming: "Good night, M. Segoffin, good night." Left alone with the delinquent, Dame Roberts exclaimed: "Would any one on earth but you coolly commit such enormities in the respectable household of a magistrate?" "What on earth do you mean, I should like to know?" "Why, hugging and kissing that girl right under my very nose when you are persecuting me with your declarations of love all the time." "I do believe you're jealous!" "Jealous! Get that idea out of your head as soon as possible. If I ever do marry again,--which God forbid!--it certainly will not be you I choose for a husband." "Are you sure of that?" "Perfectly sure." "That which is to be, will be, my dear." "But--" "Nonsense!" exclaimed her phlegmatic companion, interrupting her with the most positive air imaginable. "You are dying to marry me, and you will marry me, so it is not worth while to say any more about it." "You are right," exclaimed the woman, exasperated by her interlocutor's overweening conceit. "I think, with you, that we had better drop the subject. Monsieur's costume is finished. Take it up to his room, for he will return from court very soon, I am sure." "From court," sighed Segoffin, shaking his head sadly. A sigh was such a rare thing for this impassive individual to indulge in, that Dame Roberta's anxiety was aroused, and she asked, quickly: "Why are you sighing like a furnace, you who display no emotion at all, ordinarily?" "I expected it," remarked Segoffin, shaking his head dubiously. "What has happened? Tell me at once, for Heaven's sake." "M. Cloarek has thrown the chief judge of the court out of the window," responded Segoffin, with another sigh. "_Mon Dieu!_" "There is no undoing that which is done." "But what you say is absurd."