"Ah! your first floor is let, is it? I am very glad for you, my respected hostess, although I might be justified in complaining of the rather harsh manner in which you have behaved toward me! Capédébious! every quarter day, you make me move--go up one flight--on the pretext that my last lodging is let; whereas only the mice take my place. Do you know, Widow Cadichard, that I should be fully justified in complaining of such treatment?" "You would be justified also in paying me your rent each quarter, and that is what you haven't done, monsieur le chevalier; for I don't know the color of your money, and you have been living in my house more than a year!" "It is true, my family is very dilatory; I haven't received my allowance for a long time; but they will send it all to me in a lump!--After all, how have I injured you? You never have a cat in your Hôtel du Sanglier! You ought to thank me for brightening up this old house a bit!" "Thank you! yes, if you had been agreeable, gallant, attentive to me, I might not have made you go up so high, perhaps; but you never passed an evening here chatting with me! Monsieur always has to go running about the city! Monsieur has so many intrigues!" Passedix turned his face away, biting his lips, and hastened to change the subject. "Sandioux! how good that soup smells!" he cried. "I don't know what it's made of, but, judging from the odor, it must be a most delicious compound!" The stout hostess refused to be melted by this exclamation; she continued to eat and talk: "But luckily all my tenants do not resemble Monsieur de Passedix! There are some who pay, and who are very amiable with me besides. For instance, this new-comer, this foreigner who has been here a week--he paid a fortnight in advance, he didn't haggle at all over the price, and yet he pays me forty crowns a month for my first floor!" "Bigre! that's rather good!" "But I am sure that that man is a grand seigneur--but that doesn't prevent him from often talking with me; he isn't a bit proud!--Yesterday I dined alone--well! he sat down here and kept me company. He's a very good-looking fellow, and quite young still--thirty at most!" "What do you call this fascinating cavalier?" "The Comte de Carvajal; he's a Spaniard." "The deuce! the Comte de Carvajal!--Yes, I believe that is a great Spanish family.--Sandis! but I must confess, lovely hostess, that it seems to me rather strange that this grand seigneur, instead of occupying a handsome mansion in the neighborhood of the Palais-Cardinal or the Arsenal, comes to Place aux Chats to nest--with the Cemetery of the Innocents opposite! It is not absolutely cheerful--and a hotel where his horses and carriages cannot be accommodated!" "What does this mean, Monsieur Passedix? you are crying down my hotel now! You call this a bad quarter--then why did you come here to lodge? And why have you lodged more than a year on this Place aux Chats, which you despise?"