“I hope she is not going to be ill,” thought the Prince to himself. “And I do wish Gaillard would come. What can have happened to him?” Part IV. CHAPTER I. ADAM FROISSART. Nothing in particular had happened to Gaillard, yet the poet was in tribulation. To begin with, all his friends were too busy to attend to or amuse themselves with him. Struve was writing his book, or, rather, correcting the proof sheets, an employment that kept him short of temper and time; Pelisson had only one idea—_Pantin_; Toto was crabbedly finding out his own stupidity in the Rue de Perpignan; whilst De Brie had turned very acid over his connection with the new journal, and flung him commissions for little articles or volumes for review as if they were bones to a dog. Then his publisher had informed him, with a very long face, that only three hundred copies of “The Fall of the Damned” had sold in three weeks, whereas three thousand of “Satanitie” had gone off in the same time. To make matters worse, Papillard had stopped working; De Nani had frozen him. De Nani he felt to be the cause of all his misfortunes, and he only continued to exist—so he told himself—that he might witness De Nani’s downfall. You may imagine, then, how pleased he felt when, on the morning after the same showery day that drenched Célestin, Pelisson appeared in his rooms before eight o’clock, and pulled up his blinds. “Wake up! I want Adam Froissart’s address,” cried Pelisson, standing over the poet, and poking him with his stick to rouse him. “Froissart!” cried Gaillard, rubbing his eyes. “He is not in Paris.” “Where is he, then?” “He is in—Amiens,” said Gaillard. Froissart was a spiteful genius who possessed the unsavory humor of Papillard. No one had ever seen him, and his sole title to consideration lay in three malevolent articles leveled against De Brie and his political tendencies. They had been submitted to Pelisson by Gaillard, and so had found their way into the _Débats_. Pelisson, who noted down everything, had made a memorandum of this gentleman’s abilities. De Brie had done likewise, and though he hated this unknown journalist, he would have given a good deal to secure him as a member of his staff. He had expressed the desire in the hearing of Gaillard, and he might have obtained his wish, only that Froissart’s genius for malevolence was useless when expended against anyone else than De Brie. Needless to say, there was no Froissart. He belonged to the shadowy band that included Fanfoullard, Mirmillard, Papillard, Églantine, and Angélique. “This is a great nuisance,” grumbled Pelisson, rubbing his chin. “What do you want of Froissart?” “I am going to sack De Nani, and I want a man to take his place.” Gaillard’s countenance became glorified. “But, my dear Pierre, why seek for Froissart? Are there not plenty of men of ability in Paris to take the place of this silly old villain of a De Nani?”