And the worthy Bernard was so pale with emotion when he reentered his lodge, so pale and spent, that on seeing him enter, his wife and daughter Amanda exclaimed as with one voice: "Goodness! what is it? What has happened to you now?" "Nothing," responded he, with altered voice, "absolutely nothing." "You are deceiving me," insisted Madame Bernard, "you are concealing something from me; do not spare me; speak, I am strong--what did the new proprietor tell you? Does he think of turning us off?" "If it were only that! But just think, he told me with his own lips, he told me to--ah! you will never believe me--" "Oh, yes; only do go on." "You will have it, then!--Well, then, he told me, he ordered me to notify all the tenants that--_he lowered their rents one-third_! Did you hear what I said?--_lowered_ the rents of the tenants--" But neither Madame nor Mademoiselle Bernard heard him out--they were twisting and doubling with convulsive laughter. "Lower!" repeated they; "ah! what a good joke, what a droll man! Lower the tenants' rents." But Bernard, losing his temper and insisting that he must be taken seriously in his own lodge, his wife lost her temper too, and a quarrel followed! Madame Bernard declaring that Monsieur Bernard had, beyond a doubt, taken his fantastic order from the bottom of a litre of wine in the restaurant at the corner. But for Mademoiselle Amanda the couple would undoubtedly have come to blows, and finally Madame Bernard, who did not wish to be thought demented, threw a shawl over her head and ran to the proprietor's house. Bernard had spoken truly; with her own two ears, ornamented with big, gilded hoops, she heard the incredible word. Only, as she was a wise and prudent woman, she demanded "a bit of writing," to put, as she said, "her responsibility under cover." She, too, returned thunderstruck, and all the evening in the lodge, father, mother, and daughter deliberated. Should they obey? or should they warn some relative of this mad young man, whose common sense would oppose itself to such insanity? They decided to obey. Next morning, Bernard, buttoning himself into his best frock coat, made the rounds of the three-and-twenty lodges to announce his great news. Ten minutes afterward the house in the Rue de la Victoire was in a state of commotion impossible to describe. People who, for forty years had lived on the same floor, and never honored each other with so much as a tip of the hat, now clustered together and chatted eagerly. "Do you know, monsieur?" "It is very extraordinary." "Simply unheard of!" "The proprietor's lowered my rent!" "One-third, is it not? Mine also." "Astounding! It _must_ be a mistake!" And despite the affirmations of the Bernard family, despite even the "bit of writing," "under cover," there were found among the tenants doubting Thomases, who doubted still in the face of everything.