The young people were as merry as larks, and their laughter filled the bare attic of the Hotel de Perou.

Why should not Paul have been in good spirits?
He had in his pocket the address of the man who was to make his fortune, and on the chimney-piece was the balance of the banknote, which seemed to him an inexhaustible sum.

Rose, too, was delighted, and could not refrain from jeering at their benefactor, whom she stigmatized as "an old idiot." "Laugh while you can, my dears!" muttered Daddy Tantaine; "for this may be the last time you will do so." With these words he crept down the dark staircase, which was only lighted up on Sundays, owing to the high price of gas, and, peeping through the glass door of the porter's lodge, saw Madame Loupins engaged in cooking; and, with the timid knock of a man who has learned his lesson in poverty's grammar, he entered.
"Here is my rent, madame," said he, placing on the table ten francs and twenty centimes.

Then, as the woman was scribbling a receipt, he launched into a statement of his own affairs, and told her that he had come into a little property which would enable him to live in comfort during his few remaining years on earth; and--evidently fearing that his well-known poverty might cause Madame Loupins to discredit his assertions--drew out his pocketbook and exhibited several banknotes.
This exhibition of wealth so surprised the landlady, that when the old man left she insisted on lighting him to the door.

He turned eastward as soon as he had left the house, and, glancing at the names of the shops, entered a grocer's establishment at the corner of the Rue de Petit Pont.
This grocer, thanks to a certain cheap wine, manufactured for him by a chemist at Bercy, had achieved a certain notoriety in that quarter.