nd dishes, with the
dull-looking and dull-sounding forks of German silver--was this a
banquet worthy of this pretty young woman? The Baron would have wept
could he have seen it. The dingy decanters could not disguise the vile
hue of wine bought by the pint at the nearest wineshop. The
table-napkins had seen a week's use. In short, everything betrayed
undignified penury, and the equal indifference of the husband and wife
to the decencies of home. The most superficial observer on seeing them
would have said that these two beings had come to the stage when the
necessity of living had prepared them for any kind of dishonor that
might bring luck to them. Valerie's first words to her husband will
explain the delay that had postponed the dinner by the not
disinterested devotion of the cook.

"Samanon will only take your bills at fifty per cent, and insists on a
lien on your salary as security."

So poverty, still unconfessed in the house of the superior official,
and hidden under a stipend of twenty-four thousand francs,
irrespective of presents, had reached its lowest stage in that of the
clerk.

"You have caught on with the chief," said the man, looking at his
wife.

"I rather think so," replied she, understanding the full meaning of
his slang expression.

"What is to become of us?" Marneffe went on. "The landlord will be
down on us to-morrow. And to think of your father dying without making
a will! On my honor, those men of the Empire all think themselves as
immortal as their Emperor."

"Poor father!" said she. "I was his only child, and he was very fond
of me. The Countess probably burned the will. How could he forget me
when he used to give us as much as three or four thousand-franc notes
at once, from time to time?"

"We owe four quarters' rent, fifteen hundred francs. Is the furniture
worth so much? _That is the question_, as Shakespeare says."

"Now, good-bye, ducky!" said Valerie, who had only eaten a few
mouthfuls of the veal, from which the maid had extracted all the gravy
for a brave soldier just home from Algiers. "Great evils demand heroic
remedies."

"Valerie, where are you off to?" cried Marneffe, standing between his
wife and the door.

"I am going to see the landlord," she replied, arranging her ringlets
under her smart bonnet. "You had better try to make friends with that
old maid, if she really is your chief's cousin."

The ignorance in which the dwellers under one roof can exist as to t