rstand it; you thought that people do not
come to Paris to be bored, eh? Madame is delightful, and I congratulate
you, Monsieur."

He gave a wink, and made signs behind his back to his friends, and then
the captain had his turn.

"We are not boobies, and that fellow Roquetton is the most knowing of
the lot of us.... Ah! Monsieur Rulhiere, without any exaggeration, you
are the cream of good fellows."

And with a flushed face, and expanding his chest, he said sonorously:

"They certainly turn them out very pretty in your part of the country,
my little lady!"

Madame Rulhiere, who did not know what to say, had gone up to her
husband for protection; but she felt much inclined to go to her own room
under some pretext or other, in order to escape from her intolerable
task. She kept her ground, however, during the whole of dinner, which
was a noisy, jovial meal, during which the five electors, with their
elbows on the table, and their waistcoats unbuttoned, and half drunk,
told coarse stories, and swore like troopers. But as the coffee and the
liquors were served in the smoking room, she took leave of her guests in
an impatient voice, and went to her own room with the hasty step of an
escaped prisoner, who is afraid of being retaken.

The electors sat staring after her with gaping mouths, and Mouredus lit
a cigar, and said:

"Just listen to me, Monsieur Rulhiere; it was very kind of you to invite
us here, to your little quiet establishment, but to speak to you
frankly, I should not, in your place, wrong my lawful wife for such a
stuck-up piece of goods as this one is."

"The captain is quite right," Roquetton the notary opined; "Madame
Rulhiere, the lawful Madame Rulhiere, is much more amiable, and
altogether nicer. You are a scoundrel to deceive her; but when may we
hope to see her?"

And with a paternal grimace, he added:

"But do not be uneasy; we will all hold our tongue; it would be too sad
if she were to find it out."

THE UPSTART

You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like the type of a
happy man, with his fat cheeks that are the color of ripe apples, his
small, reddish moustache, turned up over his thick lips, with his
prominent eyes, which never know any emotion or sorrow, which remind one
of the calm eyes of cows and oxen, and his long back fixed onto two
little wriggling, crooked legs, which obtained for him the nickname of
corkscrew from some nymph of the ballet.

Dupontel, who