After all these precautions, Hotot being already in my clutch, I had only to secure his three accomplices, and I knew where to prick for them all. I took two agents with me, and soon afterwards presented myself at Bariole's in the name of the law.
"Ah!" said the mother, "when I saw you bring your body here, I feared all was not right. What will these gentlemen take?" she added, addressing my two aide-de-camps. "You will take something to be sure, what shall it be? from the small bottle that I keep for friends?" and whilst speaking, she stooped to rummage in her counter-drawer, whence she took, from amongst a parcel of millinery, an old gilt flask which contained the precious liquid. "I am obliged to hide it, or with these girls—ah! people are much to be pitied who have to deal with women. I vow, if ever I can get a means of living—how happy they are who have an income to live upon! See, I have not enough to provide myself with an arm-chair. Here is one like a skeleton, we can see its bones."
"Oh! come, tell us about your sofa; it has beautiful hair, and one leg in the air most gracefully," said a young girl, who, when we entered, was sleeping on a table in the corner of the room; "it is like Philemon and Baucis?"
"What, is that you, little Real? I did not see you. What are you chattering about with your Philemus and Baucou? What are you talking about?"
"I said," replied Fifine, "that it is like the Sybil's tripod."
"Good, good, it is the tripeman's arm-chair; you shall not say so of it any longer. I will have it new stuffed. You see she has had an education, and is not an ignorant beast like us: see what it is to have parents. But I know enough to enable me to carry on the war. Come come, Fifine, draw the cork of this bottle and have a drop."
"You are very kind, ma'am."
"Do not tell any of the others."
