But the eternal feminine had its part in the make-up of La Trompette, and so it was that one evening, just at nightfall, she presented herself at the door of Papa Labesse's little shop. He was always at home now, poor Papa Labesse, for the growing church of Sacré-Coeur had never once seen him emerging, breathless but smiling, from the little rue St. Rustique, since the day when Marcelle disappeared. He stopped his simple toil at the same hour still, but, instead of stepping out briskly upon the long, curving incline of the rue Lepic, he would seat himself in his doorway, and, oftentimes forgetting to light the pipe which he had filled, stare out wistfully across the street, to where a trim little laundress stood, busily ironing shirts, in the window of the shop that had formerly been the dairy of Madame Clapot. He looked up as La Trompette drew up before his door, and a slight frown wrinkled for an instant above his patient blue eyes, from which all the singular intensity seemed gone. "Thou hast a strange air of solitude, Papa Labesse," began La Trompette, affecting a tone of solicitude. Papa Labesse made no reply. "And Marcelle," said the woman,--"she is always with Bombiste? Poor little one! The end is so sure! Is there one who knows him better than I? Ah, non! It is always the same story,--a pair of bright eyes, a good figure, and v'là! But, without fail, he comes back to me, ce sacré coureur!" She glanced up and down the street with an air of complete unconcern, and then her eyes came back to Papa Labesse with a vindictive snap. "Happily," she added, "he will have taught her a way of earning white pieces in abundance. She is not the first, thy Marcelle. They are sprinkled from here to La Villette, the gonzesses who know the name of Bombiste Fremier. Wouldst thou prove it? Walk, then, from the place Pigalle to the place de la Rotonde to-night at twelve!" And La Trompette laughed. Papa Labesse rose suddenly to his full height. "God damn you!" he said. And this was no oath, but rather a prayer.