“_Dame!_ but you live well, Charlot,” she remarked. “The sight of the damned corpse gave me also an appetite. _Mère de Dieu!_ how white and tender her flesh was! ’Twould have made a good pottage,” she added laughing, her yellow teeth showing against her blood-red tongue like the fangs of a she-wolf--verily, she merited her name. “You should arrange with Adolphe,” the hunchback said coolly. “I will send you your _sabots_ on Wednesday.” “Eh! but I’ll come for them,” she replied with a wink; “I love to come to visit you.” The cobbler grunted, moving slowly and painfully--as he did at times--to the shop. But Mère Tigrane was reluctant to follow him,--she was listening; she thought she heard a step overhead. “Charlot,” she said amiably, “how much do you get for your room above?” “I do not rent it,” he replied calmly, but he too was listening. Happily, the sounds above ceased. “I want it,” she remarked briskly; “I will pay a good price for it--for my cousin. He is apprenticed to the blacksmith behind the Garden of the Récollets. I will look at it now--at once--Petit Bossu.” The cobbler started, but controlled himself, though la Louve had her foot on the ladder. She could be swift when she pleased, and she could hobble. “It is locked to-day,” he said coolly, “and I shall not rent it now.” She grinned, with an evil look. “What have you got there, _mon chéri_?” she demanded, shaking her cane at him with sinister pleasantry. “The devil,” replied le Bossu, sitting down to his bench and taking up a shoe and beginning to stitch. “Or his wife--which?” la Louve asked jocosely. She was satisfied now that the trap was fastened, and it was not always wise to offend the cobbler. She returned to the shop with a dissatisfied face. “You have no hospitality,” she said, “you dog of a cobbler--I will come on Wednesday again for the _sabots_.” “As you please,” he retorted indifferently, stitching away. “_Diable!_ you sew like a woman,” she remarked. “You might better be cutting my shoes out of the good wood, that does not split, than making those silly things of leather!” She lingered a little longer, but still he did not heed her, and at last she hobbled off, picking up a basket of fish that she had left on the doorstep. But she did not leave the court until she had looked again and again at the upper window of the shop of Two Shoes. Yet she saw nothing there but the white curtain fluttering in the breeze.