"The commissary!" cried Pipelet, with savage indignation; "the commissary laughed in my face." "Your face! an aged man, who has so respectable an air, that you'd look as stupid as a goose if one did not know your virtues." "Well, notwithstanding that, when I had respectfully deposed before him my heap of complaints and griefs against this infernal Cabrion, this magistrate, after looking at and laughing--yes, laughing--I say, laughing indecently--over the sign and portrait which I produced as justificatory of my complaint, replied, 'My good man, this Cabrion is a funny fellow--a jester--pay no attention to his jokes. I advise you now, in a friendly manner, to laugh at them, for really there is cause.' 'To laugh!' cried I; 'to laugh! but grief is devouring me--my existence is imbittered by those scoundrels--they pester me--they will cause me to lose my reason--I demand that they be locked up--exiled, at least from my street.' At these words the commissary smiled, and obligingly showed me the door. I understood this gesture of the magistrate, and here I am." "Magistrate of nothing at all!" cried Mrs. Pipelet. "All is finished! Anastasia, all is finished! No more hope! There is no longer any justice in France! I am atrociously sacrificed!" and by way of peroration, Pipelet threw, with all his strength, the portrait and sign to the end of the alley. Rudolph and Rigolette had, in the obscurity, slightly smiled at Pipelet's despair. After having addressed some words of consolation to Alfred, whom Anastasia was calming in the best way she could, the "prince of lodgers" left the house of the Rue du Temple with Rigolette, and got into a hackney coach to go to the residence of Francois Germain. CHAPTER XX. THE WILL. Francois Germain lived on the Boulevard Saint Denis, No. 11. During the long ride from the Rue du Temple to the Rue Saint Honore, where the woman lived who supplied Rigolette with work, Rudolph was able to appreciate still more the girl's excellent feelings. Like all characters instinctively good and devoted, she was not conscious of the delicacy and generosity of her conduct, which seemed to her quite natural. Nothing would have been easier for Rudolph than to have made a liberal provision for Rigolette, as well for her present wants as the future, so that she could have gone charitably to console Louise and Germain, without counting the time she lost in these visits from her work, her only resource; but the prince feared to weaken the merit of the grisette's devotion in rendering it too easy; quite decided to recompense the rare and charming qualities which he had discovered in her, he wished to follow her to the end of this new and interesting trial. At the end of an hour the carriage, on its return from her Rue Saint Honore, stopped on the Boulevard Saint Denis, No. 11, before a house of modest appearance.