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 recommendations—your recommendations from dead people. Be off with you!"

Jeanne carefully wrapped up her recommendations, put them back into the pocket of her dress, and then said, imploringly, in a timid and sorrowful voice:

"If Madame will go as high as thirty-five francs, we could come to terms."

"Not a sou. Be off with you! Go to Algeria to find again your Mme. Robert. Go where you like. There is no lack of vagabonds like you; there are heaps of them. Be off with you."

With sad face and slow step Jeanne left the bureau, after curtseying twice. I saw from her eyes and lips that she was on the point of crying. Left alone, the lady shouted furiously: "Ah! these domestics, what a plague! It is impossible to be served these days."

To which Mme. Paulhat-Durand, who had finished sorting her cards, answered, majestic, crushed, and severe:

"I had warned you, Madame; they are all like that. They are unwilling to do anything, and expect to earn hundreds and thousands. I have nothing else to-day. All the others are worse. To-morrow I will try to find you something. Oh! it is very distressing, I assure you."

I got down from my post of observation the very moment that Jeanne Le Godec was re-entering the ante-room, amid an uproar.