Lisbeth never left Adeline's bedside; she sat up all night, and was much admired by the two younger women. "Well, my dear Madame de Saint-Esteve," said Victorin, showing the dreadful old woman into his study and carefully shutting the doors, "how are we getting on?" "Ah, ha! my dear friend," said she, looking at Victorin with cold irony. "So you have thought things over?" "Have you done anything?" "Will you pay fifty thousand francs?" "Yes," replied Victorin, "for we must get on. Do you know that by one single phrase that woman has endangered my mother's life and reason? So, I say, get on." "We have got on!" replied the old woman. "Well?" cried Victorin, with a gulp. "Well, you do not cry off the expenses?" "On the contrary." "They run up to twenty-three thousand francs already." Victorin looked helplessly at the woman. "Well, could we hoodwink you, you, one of the shining lights of the law?" said she. "For that sum we have secured a maid's conscience and a picture by Raphael.--It is not dear." Hulot, still bewildered, sat with wide open eyes. "Well, then," his visitor went on, "we have purchased the honesty of Mademoiselle Reine Tousard, a damsel from whom Madame Marneffe has no secrets--" "I understand!" "But if you shy, say so." "I will play blindfold," he replied. "My mother has told me that that couple deserve the worst torments--" "The rack is out of date," said the old woman. "You answer for the result?" "Leave it all to me," said the woman; "your vengeance is simmering." She looked at the clock; it was six. "Your avenger is dressing; the fires are lighted at the _Rocher de Cancale_; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting hot. --Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!--Everything is ready. And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will be; good evening, my son." "Good-bye, madame." "Do you know English?" "Yes." "Well, my son, thou shalt be King. That is to say, you shall come into your inheritance," said the dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare, and who seemed to know her Shakespeare. She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study. "The consultation is for to-morrow!" said she, with the gracious air of a regular client. She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their eyes a pinchbeck countess. "What impudence!" thought Hulot, bowing to his pretended client. Baron Montes de Montejanos was a _lion_, but a lion not accounted for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses, and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves and most consumedly thrashed.