Saccard reflected a minute longer. 'Well, it is settled,' he eventually said. 'Make an appointment and bring your man here. You shall be director, and I will see to centralising all our advertising in your hands. I wish it to be something unheard of, enormous--oh! later on when we have the wherewithal to set the machine going properly.' He had risen. Jantrou also rose, concealing the joy he felt at finding bread, beneath a bantering laugh, the laugh of one who has lost caste, and is weary of all the mire of Paris. 'At last, then, I shall return to my element, my dear _belles lettres_!' 'Don't engage anybody as yet,' said Saccard, as he escorted him to the door. 'And while I think of it, just make a note of a _protégé_ of mine, Paul Jordan, a young man whom I find remarkably talented, and in whom you will have an excellent literary contributor. I will write him a letter and tell him to call upon you.' As Jantrou was going out by the private door, this happy arrangement of the two outlets struck him. 'Why, this is convenient,' said he, in his familiar style. 'One can conjure people away. When beautiful ladies come, like the one I saluted just now in the ante-room, the Baroness Sandorff----' Saccard did not know that she was there, and with a shrug of his shoulders he sought to express his indifference; but the other chuckled, refusing to believe in such disinterestedness. Then the two men exchanged a vigorous handshake, and Jantrou went off. When he was alone, Saccard instinctively approached the mirror, and brushed back his hair, in which not a white thread as yet appeared. He had not, however, spoken falsely to Jantrou, for women scarcely entered his thoughts, now that business had again taken entire possession of him; and he merely yielded to the involuntary gallantry which makes it impossible for a Frenchman to find himself alone with a woman without fearing that she will look upon him as a blockhead if he does not conquer her. And so, as soon as he had ushered in the Baroness, he showed himself remarkably attentive. 'Be seated, madame, I pray you.' Never had he seen her so strangely seductive, with her red lips, and her burning eyes with bruised lids, set deeply under thick eyebrows. What could she want of him? And he was much surprised, almost mortified, when she had explained to him the motive of her visit. '_Mon Dieu_! monsieur, I beg your pardon for disturbing you without advantage to yourself; but between people who move in the same circle it is necessary one should render each other these little services. You lately had a cook, a _chef_, whom my husband is on the point of engaging. I have therefore simply come to inquire about him.'