"Do you a favour, M. Rodolph? Lord love your heart and soul! Just say what there is I can do for you, and then see whether I will or no. Come, what is it? Shall I jump into the fire? or curl my best wig with boiling oil? or is there anybody I can worry, bite, pinch, or scold for you? Only say the word. I am wholly at your service, heart and body, your most humble slave; always stipulating that in my service there shall be no offence to Alfred's prior claims on me." "Oh, my dear Madame Pipelet, make yourself perfectly easy! I want you to manage a little affair for me, which is this: I have got to place out a young orphan girl, who is utterly a stranger to Paris; and I wish very much, with your assistance, to obtain for her the situation vacant in M. Ferrand's establishment." "You don't mean it? La, I never can think you are in earnest! What! Send a poor, friendless girl to live with such a miserly wretch as that hard-hearted old notary? No, no, M. Rodolph, that was not what you wanted me to do, I'm sure!" "But, indeed, it is; why, a place is a place, and, if the young person I mentioned to you should not like it, she is not obliged to stay there; and then, don't you see, she would at once be able to maintain herself, while I should have no further uneasiness about her?" "Oh, as far as that goes, M. Rodolph, it is your affair, not mine; and, whatever happens, remember I warned you. If, after all you have heard, you still think the place would suit your young friend, why, of course, you can please yourself; and, then, to be sure, as far as regards the notary, there are always two sides to every picture, a for and against to every tale; he is hard-hearted as a flint-stone, obstinate as a jackass, bigoted as a Jesuit, that's true enough; but then he is of the most scrupulous punctuality in all his affairs; he gives very low wages, but, then, he pays on the nail; the living is very bad at his house, still it is the same one day as another. In a word, though it is a house where a servant must work like a horse, yet, at the same time, it is one of those dull, quiet, stupid places, where there is certainly nothing to tempt a girl to get into mischief. Certainly, Louise managed to go wrong, but that was all a chance." "Madame Pipelet, I am going to confide a great secret to your honour." "Well, then, upon the word and honour of Anastasie Pipelet, whose maiden name was Gulimard, as true as there is a God and heaven, and that Alfred always wears green coats, I will be silent as a stockfish!" "You must not breathe a word to M. Pipelet." "That I won't, I swear by the head of that dear old duck himself, if it relates to a proper and correct affair." "Surely, Madame Pipelet, you have too good an opinion of me to suppose, for a minute, that I would insult your chaste ears with anything that was not?"