"Dressing myself! They are all in a plot to drive me frantic! Here is my esquire doing just as my page did! He doesn't come back! How well I am served! It was worth while setting up a staff of servants!--Well, I must make up my mind to something. Give me my linen, rascal! and while I am putting it on, that infernal bald-head will return, I trust--or perhaps my page, Bahuchet!" But Plumard, on leaving Master Hugonnet's house, weighed in his hand the purse that his new master had bade him take. It was a large purse and well filled; the ex-clerk could not resist the desire to know how much it contained; so he stopped, sat on a stone, and counted out in the hollow of his hand twenty-two gold pieces. That amounted to a considerable sum; the ex-Basochian had never possessed so much. The sight of the gold dazzled him; and the numerous bumpers he had drunk at Master Hugonnet's having made him slightly giddy, he passed his hand across his brow and muttered: "By Saint Grimoire! I shall never earn as much as this in a year, playing the esquire to that long, loose-jointed chevalier. Suppose I should begin by enjoying myself with this money? The opportunity is all the better because I shall not have to share with Bahuchet. I am in luck, on my word! I'll go to the tavern which the pretty girls of the quarter frequent; it's at the Pré-aux-Clercs. I have enough to treat them like a great nobleman!--Oh! I'll wager that they will not refuse to dance a courante or a Périgourd step with me to-night." And Monsieur Plumard placed the purse in his belt and betook himself to the Pré-aux-Clercs, without another thought for him he had left in the bath. Bahuchet, having no purse intrusted to him, had been unable to follow the same course of action as his friend Plumard; but other reasons kept him from returning to the chevalier. Having taken his new master's garments to the cleanser's, where he was told that it would take a long quarter of an hour to remove the spots on the doublet and breeches, the little man left the shop and strolled aimlessly along the street, stopping to look at everything that could possibly amuse him for a moment. Suddenly, as he was watching two dogs fight, Bahuchet felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and recognized Miretta, the young Marquise de Santoval's pretty lady's-maid. "I have found you at last, Monsieur Bahuchet," she said; "I have been looking for you all over Paris for a long time." "You have been looking for me, captivating brunette?" "Yes; I went to your solicitor's to find you." "To Maître Bourdinard's?--He dismissed me because I made blots on the paper with my pen, and that wasted the ink. I say! what a skinflint!--So you have been looking for me! I beg you to believe that, if I had known it---- Do you require the services of your humble servant?" "No, not I, but my mistress, madame la marquise.--Come, come quickly, away from all these people."