"Do I? Don't I? Just look here; I am ready to give you a memorandum of having received so much on account; and, whenever you bring the rest, you shall have a receipt in full, and your father along with it. There, now, that's a handsome offer, ain't it?" "Mercy! mercy!" supplicated Louise. "Whew!" cried the man, "here's a scene over again! My stars, I hope this one isn't a-going mad, too, for the whole family seems uncommon queer about the head! Well, I declare I never see anything like it! It is enough to set a man 'prespiring' in the midst of winter!" and here the bailiff burst into a loud, coarse laugh at his own brutal wit. "Oh, my poor, dear father!" exclaimed Louise, almost distractedly; "when I had hoped to have saved you!" "No, no!" cried the lapidary, in a tone of utter despair, and stamping his foot in wild desperation, "hope nothing for me; God has forgotten me, and Heaven has ceased to be just to a wretch like me!" "Calm yourself, my worthy friend," said a rich, manly voice; "there is always a kind Providence that watches over and preserves good and honest men like you." At the same instant Rodolph appeared at the door of the small recess we have spoken of, from whence he had been an invisible spectator of much that we have related; he was pale, and extremely agitated. At this sudden apparition the bailiff drew back, with surprise; while Morel and his daughter gazed on the stranger with bewildered wonder. Taking from his waistcoat pocket a quantity of folded bank-notes, Rodolph selected three, and, presenting them to Malicorne, he said: "Here are two thousand five hundred francs; give this young woman back the money you have just received from her." Still more and more astonished at this singular interference, the man half hesitated to take the notes, and, when he had received them, he eyed them with the utmost suspicion, turning and twisting them about in every direction; at length, satisfied both as to their reality and genuineness, he finally deposited them in his pocketbook: but, as his surprise and alarm began to subside, so did his natural coarseness of idea return, and, eyeing Rodolph from head to foot with an impertinent stare, he exclaimed: "The notes are right enough; but pray who and what are you that go about with such sums? I should just wish to know whose it is, and how you came by it?" Rodolph was very plainly dressed, and his appearance by no means improved by the dust and dirt his clothes had gathered during his stay in M. Pipelet's Cabinet of Melodrama. "I desired you to give back the gold you received just now from this young person," replied Rodolph, in a severe and authoritative tone. "You desired me! And who the devil are you, to give your orders?" answered the man, approaching Rodolph in a threatening manner. "Give back the gold! Give it back, I say!" said the prince, grasping the wrist of Malicorne so tightly that the unhappy bailiff winced beneath his iron clutch.