“Well,” replied the young man, “when I told him I should doubtless call on you he formally promised me to come.” “You made him thoroughly understand that I counted on the baron to-day?” “Certainly. That's what appeared to decide him.” They were speaking of Mouret, who the year before had suddenly taken such a liking to Bouthemont that he had admitted him to share his pleasures, and had even introduced him to Henriette, glad to have an agreeable fellow always at hand to enliven an intimacy of which he was getting tired. It was thus that Bouthemont had ultimately become the confidant of his governor and of the handsome widow; he did their little errands, talked of the one to the other, and sometimes reconciled them. Henriette, in her jealous fits, abandoned herself to a familiarity which sometimes surprised and embarrassed him, for she lost all her lady-like prudence, using all her art to save appearances. She resumed violently, “You ought to have brought him. I should have been sure then.” “Well,” said he, with a good-natured laugh, “it isn't my fault if he escapes so frequently now. Oh! he's very fond of me, all the same. Were it not for him I should be in a bad way at the shop.” His situation at The Ladies' Paradise was really menaced since the last stock-taking. It was in vain that he adduced the rainy season; one could not overlook the considerable stock of fancy silks; and as Hutin was improving the occasion, undermining him with the governors with an increase of sly rage, he felt the ground cracking under him. Mouret had condemned him, weary, no doubt, of this witness who prevented him breaking with Henriette, tired of a familiarity which was profitless. But, in accordance with his usual tactics, he was pushing Bourdoncle forward; it was Bourdoncle and the other partners who insisted on his dismissal at each board meeting; whilst he resisted still, according to his account, defending his friend energetically, at the risk of getting into serious trouble with the others. “Well, I shall wait,” resumed Madame Desforges. “You know that girl is coming here at five o'clock, I want to see them face to face. I must discover their secret.” And she returned to this long-meditated plan. She repeated in her fever that she had requested Madame Aurélie to send her Denise to look at a mantle which fitted badly. When she had once got the young girl in her room, she would find a means of calling Mouret, and could then act. Bouthemont, who had sat down opposite her, was gazing at her with his fine laughing eyes, which he endeavoured to render grave. This jovial, dissipated fellow, with his coal-black beard, whose warm Gascon blood empurpled his cheeks, was thinking that these fine ladies were not much good, and that they let out a nice lot of secrets, when they opened their hearts. His friend's mistresses, simple shop-girls, certainly never made more complete confessions.