--If
you will wait a minute, I have two thousand francs here."
The Baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.
"Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where
to go."
"But you will tell me, old wretch?"
"Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a
little angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be
depraved."
"Do not forget the police-court," said Lisbeth, who flattered herself
that she would some day see Hulot there.
"No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the Baron, "a part of the
town where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me
there. I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a
retired cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my
back to be shorn any more."
"No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his coat.
"Supposing I take you there."
Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without
taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had
finished.
In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing
but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base
passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs
in his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the
door of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.
"Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send
none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from
different parts.
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