"Oh, you will take care not to do so. For if you own that you have been duped, your confederates will think you a fool, and dismiss you without wages. Now this would be bad--just on the eve of their success. If you tell them how long you have slept, they will think you an idiot, for I never saw any one take to champagne so kindly as you did just now, my dear Pignana. Now, adieu, for I must go. Be still," said he, pushing Pignana down with all his strength. "No, no, do not take the trouble to go with me--you are too kind. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, my dear fellow." He left the room, and sleep took possession of its prey. Pignana felt his ideas grow gradually more confused, and his real life pass away. A few minutes after Stenio's departure, M. Pignana was sound asleep. Stenio then slowly opened the door of the room, and glided like a shadow over the floor to the sleeper, into whose pockets he placed his hand. "Nothing here--not here. The devil, can it be that it is not about him!" A smile of triumph, however, soon appeared on his lips, for he had found what he wanted. He discovered a kind of pocket in the waistcoat of the false tradesman, and felt in it. "Here it is!" said he. Pignana moved. Stenio paused, and then took from the sleeper's pocket a door-key. He then left, and did not return.... While the events recorded above were transpiring, about eight o'clock on the evening, in Jacob-street, Mlle. Celestine Crepineau waited as Desdemona might have done for Othello, singing the melancholy romance of "The Willow." This was to console her for the prolonged absence of the bear-hunter, who had not been during the whole day in her lodge. The finger of Celestine furtively wiped away the tears which dripped down her long aquiline nose. Hope now and then arose in her heart, but that hope was betrayed. A man with a stern voice asked for Dr. Matheus, and went to his room. Seven times hope was enkindled in her heart only to be disappointed. She became angry, and as she could not confess to that passion in relation to the bear-hunter, and must have some pretext, she vented her temper on the Doctor's visitors. "How soon will this be over?" said she. "All Paris has come this evening to see my handsome lodger. What brings all these _savans_ hither? They will keep me awake until late hours, and then Mr. Nuñez will say maliciously in the morning, 'Your eyes, Mlle. Celestine, are very heavy this morning. What have you been dreaming?' Then he will take liberties altogether inconvenient to a person of my sex." The seven blows on the knocker had announced the union of eight persons, including Von Apsberg, in the ground-floor parlor, the apartment through which the unfortunate Pignana used to go and come. Two of the Doctor's friends were d'Harcourt and Taddeo Rovero. The others we will tell by and by.