"For the moment, to Paris."
"And in Paris where have they gone?"
"Dame, chez elles--to their house," said the femme de chambre, who
appeared to think that Bernard asked too many questions.
But Bernard persisted.
"Where is their house?"
The waiting-maid looked at him from head to foot.
"If Monsieur wishes to write, many of Madame's letters come to her
banker," she said, inscrutably.
"And who is her banker?"
"He lives in the Rue de Provence."
"Very good--I will find him out," said our hero, turning away.
The discriminating reader who has been so good as to interest himself
in this little narrative will perhaps at this point exclaim with a
pardonable consciousness of shrewdness: "Of course he went the next day
to the Rue de Provence!" Of course, yes; only as it happens Bernard did
nothing of the kind. He did one of the most singular things he ever did
in his life--a thing that puzzled him even at the time, and with regard
to which he often afterward wondered whence he had drawn the ability
for so remarkable a feat--he simply spent a fortnight at
Blanquais-les-Galets. It was a very quiet fortnight; he spoke to no one,
he formed no relations, he was company to himself.
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