"
"He saved my life, too, madame. What sort of a man is this M.
Fraisier?"
"He is the sort of man, my dear lady, out of whom it is very difficult
to get the postage-money at the end of the month."
To a person of La Cibot's intelligence this was enough.
"One may be poor and honest," observed she.
"I am sure I hope so," returned Fraisier's portress. "We are not
rolling in coppers, let alone gold or silver; but we have not a
farthing belonging to anybody else."
This sort of talk sounded familiar to La Cibot.
"In short, one can trust him, child, eh?"
"Lord! when M. Fraisier means well by any one, there is not his like,
so I have heard Mme. Florimond say."
"And why didn't she marry him when she owed her fortune to him?" La
Cibot asked quickly. "It is something for a little haberdasher, kept
by an old man, to be a barrister's wife--"
"Why?--" asked the portress, bringing Mme. Cibot out into the passage.
"Why?--You are going to see him, are you not, madame?--Very well, when
you are in his office you will know why."
From the state of the staircase, lighted by sash-windows on the side
of the yard, it was pretty evident that the inmates of the house, with
the exception of the landlord and M. Fraisier himself, were all
workmen. There were traces of various crafts in the deposit of mud
upon the steps--brass-filings, broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and
esparto grass lay scattered about. The walls of the upper stories were
covered with apprentices' ribald scrawls and caricatures.
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