The banker,
to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the
array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the
style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the
linen--Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of
flowered damask.

At dinner it was the Baron's turn to be amazed on tasting Asie's
cookery.

"I understant," said he, "vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic cooking."

"I begin to think he loves me," said Esther to Europe; "he has said
something almost like a _bon mot_."

"I said many vorts," said he.

"Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!" cried the
girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for
which the banker was famous.

The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an indigestion, on
purpose that he might go home early; so this was all he got in the way
of pleasure out of his first evening with Esther. At the theatre he was
obliged to drink an immense number of glasses of eau sucree, leaving
Esther alone between the acts.

By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called chance,
Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val-Noble were at the play that
evening. _Richard Darlington_ enjoyed a wild success--and a deserved
success--such as is seen only in Paris. The men who saw this play all
came to the conclusion that a lawful wife might be thrown out of window,
and the wives loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.

The women said to each other: "This is too much! we are driven to
it--but it often happens!"

Now a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther was, could not
show off with impunity in a stage-box at the Porte-Saint-Martin. And so,
during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box where
the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity of the
unknown fair one with La Torpille.

"Heyday! where has she dropped from?" said Mariette to Madame du
Val-Noble. "I thought she was drowned."

"But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and handsomer
than she was six years ago."

"Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame d'Espard and
Madame Zayonchek," said the Comte de Brambourg, who had brought the
three women to the play, to a pit-tier box. "Isn't she the 'rat' you
meant to send me to hocus my uncle?" said he, addressing Tullia.

"The very same," said the singer. "Du Bruel, go down to the stalls and