Gerald, thanks to Olivier's recommendation, was received by Madame Herbaut with great cordiality. On the afternoon of that same day grim M. Bouffard called for the rent Commander Bernard owed him. Madame Barbancon paid him, overcoming with great difficulty her strong desire to disfigure the ferocious landlord's face with her nails. Unfortunately, the money thus obtained, instead of appeasing M. Bouffard's greed, seemed to imbue him with increased energy to collect his dues, and persuaded that, but for his persistent dunning and abuse, Madame Barbancon would not have paid him, he hastened off to the Rue Monceau where Herminie lived, resolved to treat the poor girl with increased severity, and thus secure the payment of the rent she owed him. CHAPTER XXVII. THE ABODE OF THE DUCHESS. Herminie lived on the Rue de Monceau in one of the numerous dwellings of which M. Bouffard was the owner. She occupied a room on the ground floor, reached by a small hallway opening under the archway of the porte-cochere. The two windows looked out upon a pretty garden, enclosed on one side by an evergreen hedge, and on the other by a tall lattice that separated it from the adjoining street. This garden really pertained to a much larger apartment on the ground floor, an apartment which, together with another suite of rooms on the third floor, was unoccupied,--an unpleasant state of things, which considerably increased M. Bouffard's ill-humour towards his delinquent tenants. Nothing could have been simpler, yet in better taste, than this abode of the duchess. A cheap but exceedingly fresh and pretty chintz covered the walls and rather low ceiling of the room. In the daytime full draperies of the same material concealed a large alcove in which the bed stood, as well as two glass doors near it, one of which opened into a tiny dressing-room, and the other into the hall, a sort of antechamber about eight feet square. Chintz curtains, lined with pink, veiled the windows, which were also decorated with pretty white muslin sash curtains, tied back with pink ribbons. A carpet, with a white ground, with small bouquets of pink roses dropped here and there,--this carpet had been the most expensive item in Herminie's furnishing,--covered the floor. The mantel drapery, beautifully embroidered by Herminie herself, was pale blue, with garlands of roses and jonquils. Two candlesticks of exquisite Pompeian design stood, one on either side of a white marble clock, surmounted by a statuette of Joan of Arc, while at each end of the mantel stood two tall vases of _gres verni_, a wonderful invention, by the way. These vases, which were of the purest Etruscan form, held big bunches of fresh roses, which filled the room with their delicious fragrance. These modest mantel decorations, being all of the cheapest materials, were of slight intrinsic value, having cost not more than fifty or sixty francs, but from an artistic point of view they were irreproachable.