there are in the world! But where is your
wife to-day? Ah! here she comes! Good morning, my lady Elise. So
charming in the early morning; but so pale! Eh, eh, eh; this is not as
it should be! What is it that I say and preach continually? Exercise,
fresh air--else nothing in the world avails anything. But who listens to
one's preaching? No--adieu my friends! Ah! where is my snuff-box? Under
the newspapers? The abominable newspapers; they must lay their hands on
everything; one can't keep even one's snuff-box in peace for them!
Adieu, Mrs. Elise! Adieu, Frank. Nay, see how he sits there and reads
coarse abuse of himself, just as if it mattered nothing to him. Now he
laughs into the bargain. Enjoy your breakfasts, my friends!"

"Will you not enjoy it with us?" asked the friendly voice of Mrs. Frank;
"we can offer you to-day quite fresh home-baked bread."

"No, I thank you," said the Assessor; "I am no friend to such home-made
things; good for nothing, however much they may be bragged of.
Home-baked, home-brewed, home-made. Heaven help us! It all sounds very
fine, but it's good for nothing."

"Try if to-day it really be good for nothing," urged she. "There, we
have now Madame Folette on the table; you must, at least, have a cup of
coffee from her."

"What do you mean?" asked the surprised Assessor; "what is it? What
horrid Madame is it that is to give me a cup of coffee? I never could
bear old women; and if they are now to come upon the coffee-table----"

"The round coffee-pot there," said Mrs. Frank, good-humouredly, "is
Madame Folette. Could you not bear that?"

"But why call it so?" asked he. "What foolery is that?"

"It is a fancy of the children," returned she. "An honest old woman of
this name, whom I once treated to a cup of coffee, exclaimed, at the
first sight of her favourite beverage, 'When I see a coffee-pot, it is
all the same to me as if I saw an angel from heaven!' The children heard
this, and insisted upon it that there was a great resemblance in figure
between Madame Folette and this coffee-pot; and so ever since it has
borne her name. The children are very fond of her, because she gives
them every Sunday morning their coffee."

"What business have children with coffee?" asked the Assessor. "Cannot
they be thin enough without it; and are they to be burnt up before their
time? There's Petrea, is she not lanky enough? I never was very fond of
her; and now, if she is to grow up into a coffee wife, why-