passionately fond of the Opera and the theatres;
but her temper was insupportable. " And I for
one will not put up with it," quoth Madame
Hummelhausen. Jean Baptiste, my brother, you
are a simple. Turn this girl out of doors if she
won't have you, and make the happiness of some
honest woman whose temper does not turn the
world topsy-turvy, and who knows how to love
and obey a good kind man."

J. B. Constant was far too much in love to see
the force of this argument. He implored his
sister to wait until the expiration of the
stipulated twelve months— or at least of six, when he
would see Valérie, and come to some definite
understanding with her. Meanwhile, faithful to
his promise of leaving Valérie in peace, he waited
patiently for the post from Avignon to bring him
that long-expected re-directed letter with the
Paris postmark. But it never came. At his
instigation, Madame Hummelhausen gently
hinted to Valérie that it might be as well to
write a line to her brother.

"A quoi bon?" retorted the girl. "That my
letter should travel five hundred leagues backwards
and forwards to no purpose? Do you
think I am an idiot? The great dolt is here.
Yes; Monsieur Jean Baptiste Constant has been
prowling about Paris these two months, engaged
in the highly dignified occupation of playing
the spy over a young girl. Since when have you
kept spies in your family, madame? Does
MonsieurConstant belong to the police? I have
caught sight of him hundreds of times, on the
Boulevards, in the Luxembourg and Tuileries
gardens, at the theatres, at church even. What
does he mean by this insolence, in dogging my
footsteps? Why does he not come here, like
an honest man, and tell me what he wants?"

"He promised to leave you in peace for six
months," pleaded Madame Hummelhausen.

"Let him come now. I wish to see him. I
have something to say to him."

He went to her, his heart bounding with the
hope that she had relented; that she would say
to him, "Constant, I have teased you long
enough. I am changed. I am grateful. I am
yours." But, the nether millstone still held its
place in her breast. She received him with the
old mockery, the old disdain. Her inflexibility
had gotten a Parisian gloss upon it, and would
have been horrible, had she not looked more
beautiful than ever.

"I am sick of being a pensioner," she said;
"of being told that I ought to be grateful for
this and for that. I want to be free, and to earn
my own livelihood."

She had the hardihood to tell Jean Baptiste
that she wished to go on the stage. "I have a
mission for the dramatic career," she said, with
lofty conceit. " And you should enter me as a
student of the Conservatory, as a singer, or a
dancer, or an actress; but that I abhor
discipline,and before a week was over should
undoubtedly box the ears of one of the professors.
Imagine boxing the ears of Monsieur Cherubini!
No; I must go where I can give orders, instead
of receiving them."

She unfolded her plans. She had made
acquaintance, through the Hummelhausens, with
one Duruflée, who had a kind of private theatre
for dramatic aspirants at the Batignolles. She
would pay him a premium— the funds, of course,
to be furnished by M. Constant— and would
practise among his pupils for a few months.
Then Duruflée would get her, for a commission,
an engagement at one of the petty Boulevard
theatres. Thence to the Gaîté, thence to the
Porte St. Martin, thence to the Théâtre-Français.

J. B. Constant understood, and shuddered, but
he did not demur.

"And after that?" he asked.

"After that, we shall see," she replied; " after
that, if you are very, very quiet, and well
behaved,the ice may melt. How many years
did the bon homme Jacob wait for Laban's
daughter?"

'Twas the first inkling of a promise she had
ever given him. It threw him into an ecstasy of
joy. He agreed to all she asked. Madame
Hummelhausen was glad to be rid of her troublesome
charge, but said little to encourage her
brother's hopes. " She has no heart, not an atom,"
she persisted. J. B. Constant would not listen to
his sister. He would not have lent an ear, where
Valérie was concerned, to Solomon, or to Nathan
the Wise, or to the seven sapient men of Gotham.
What could those last-named wiseacres have
done beyond advising him to go to sea in a
bowl? And was he not already launched upon
the ocean in a skiff quite as frail?

Valérie chose to have apartments of her own,
at the Batignolles, close to M. Duruflée's private
theatre. This worthy had been a chorister at
the Académie till he lost his voice, when he
turned chef de claque, or head of a band of hired
applauders at the theatre. He lost his place
through venality— for there is a code of honour
even among claqueurs— being detected in taking
money from two rival actresses who were to
make their début on the same night. The claque
applauded both. The two affirmatives made a
negative: neither triumphed. The rivals were
furious; the direction scandalised, and Duruflée
had his congé. After such a Fontainebleau (if
to be kicked out can be considered an abdication)
there was clearly no Elba for the banished potentate
of the claque, but in the Rue de Jérusalem,
He became affiliated to the police; then he
served the Tribunal of Commerce as one of its
bailiffs; then he went on the Bourse, and, by
assiduous speculation for a fall, contrived to
win some ten thousand francs of the basest
money in the world. His dramatic propensities
were still strong within him, and he invested his
gains in the organisation of a Théâtre de Jeunes
Elèves at the Batignolles. He was very fat, good
natured, clever, gross, humorous, astute, and a
consummate blackguard. He still kept up his
connexion with the Préfecture. His insatiable
hirst for absinthe made him one of those rare