wish you to prepare my menu.

_Vatel_--I will blow my brains out before I dishonor my name.

_Poirier_ [_aside_]--Another fellow who adores his name! [_Aloud_.] You
may burn your brains, Monsieur Vatel, but don't burn your sauces.--Well,
_bon jour_! [_Exit Vatel_.] And now to write invitations to my old
cronies of the Rue des Bourdonnais. Monsieur le Marquis de Presles, I'll
soon take the starch out of you.

[_He goes out whistling the first couplet of 'Monsieur and Madame
Denis.'_]

A CONTEST OF WILLS

From 'The Fourchambaults'

_Madame Fourchambault_--Why do you follow me?

_Fourchambault_--I'm not following you: I'm accompanying you.

_Madame Fourchambault_--I despise you; let me alone. Oh! my poor mother
little thought what a life of privation would be mine when she gave me
to you with a dowry of eight hundred thousand francs!

_Fourchambault_--A life of privation--because I refuse you a yacht!

_Madame Fourchambault_--I thought my dowry permitted me to indulge a
few whims, but it seems I was wrong.

_Fourchambault_--A whim costing eight thousand francs!

_Madame Fourchambault_--Would you have to pay for it?

_Fourchambault_--That's the kind of reasoning that's ruining me.

_Madame Fourchambault_--Now he says I'm ruining him! His whole fortune
comes from me.

_Fourchambault_--Now don't get angry, my dear. I want you to have
everything in reason, but you must understand the situation.

_Madame Fourchambault_--The situation?

_Fourchambault_--I ought to be a rich man; but thanks to the continual
expenses you incur in the name of your dowry, I can barely rub along
from day to day. If there should be a sudden fall in stocks, I have no
reserve with which to meet it.

_Madame Fourchambault_--That can't be true! Tell me at once that it
isn't true, for if it were so you would be without excuse.

_Fourchambault_--I or you?

_Madame Fourchambault_--This is too much! Is it my fault that you don't
understand business? If you haven't had the wit to make the best use of
your way of living and your family connections--any one else--

_Fourchambault_--Quite likely! But I am petty enough to be a scrupulous
man, and to wish to remain one.

_Madame Fourchambault_--Pooh! That's the excuse of all the dolts who
can't succeed. They set up to be the only honest fellows in business. In
my opinion, Monsieur, a timid and mediocre man should not insist upon
remaining at the head of a bank, but should turn the posi