to so great a stretch that he seemed pulling off his tights
the wrong way. "Explain yourself, if you please! This lady is my wife!"

"Say that again,--that's all!" cried the whiskered stranger, in most
horrible French, and with a furious grimace, as he shook both his fists
just under the nose of the epicier.

"Say it again, sir," said Monsieur Goupille, by no means daunted; "and
why should not I say it again? That lady is my wife!"

"You lie!--she is mine!" cried the German; and bending down, he caught
the fair Adele from the Pole with as little ceremony as if she had never
had a great-grandfather a marquis, and giving her a shake that might
have roused the dead, thundered out,--

"Speak! Madame Bihl! Are you my wife or not?"

"Monstre!" murmured Adele, opening her eyes.

"There--you hear--she owns me!" said the German, appealing to the
company with a triumphant air.

"C'est vrai!" said the soft voice of the policeman. "And now, pray don't
let us disturb your amusements any longer. We have a fiacre at the door.
Remove your lady, Monsieur Bihl."

"Monsieur Lofe!--Monsieur Lofe!" cried, or rather screeched the epicier,
darting across the room, and seizing the chef by the tail of his coat,
just as he was half way through the door, "come back! Quelle mauvaise
plaisanterie me faites-vous ici? Did you not tell me that lady was
single? Am I married or not: Do I stand on my head or my heels?"

"Hush-hush! mon bon bourgeois!" whispered Mr. Love; "all shall be
explained to-morrow!"

"Who is this gentleman?" asked Monsieur Favart, approaching Mr. Love,
who, seeing himself in for it, suddenly jerked off the epicier, thrust
his hands down into his breeches' pockets, buried his chin in his
cravat, elevated his eyebrows, screwed in his eyes, and puffed out his
cheeks, so that the astonished Monsieur Goupille really thought himself
bewitched, and literally did not recognise the face of the match-maker.

"Who is this gentleman?" repeated the little officer, standing beside,
or rather below, Mr. Love, and looking so diminutive by the contras that
you might have fancied that the Priest of Hymen had only to breathe to
blow him away.

"Who should he be, monsieur?" cried, with great pertness, Madame Rosalie
Caumartin, coming to the relief, with the generosity of her sex.--"This
is Monsieur Lofe--Anglais celebre. What have you to say against him?"

"He has got five hundred francs of mine!" cried the epicier.

The policeman sca