s, they promptly
brought them to him, imitated in this by a goodly number of the
small capitalists of the neighborhood, who were wont to remark
among themselves,

"That man is safer than the bank!"

Millionaire or otherwise, the cashier of the Mutual Credit became
daily more difficult to live with. If strangers, those who had
with him but a superficial intercourse, if the Saturday guests
themselves, discovered in him no appreciable change, his wife and
his children followed with anxious surprise the modifications of
his humor.

If outwardly he still appeared the same impassible, precise, and
grave man, he showed himself at home more fretful than an old maid,
--nervous, agitated, and subject to the oddest whims. After
remaining three or four days without opening his lips, he would
begin to speak upon all sorts of subjects with amazing volubility.
Instead of watering his wine freely, as formerly, he had begun to
drink it pure; and he often took two bottles at his meal, excusing
himself upon the necessity that he felt the need of stimulating
himself a little after his excessive labors.

Then he would be taken with fits of coarse gayety; and he related
singular anecdotes, intermingled with slang expressions, which
Maxence alone could understand.

On the morning of the first day of January, 1872, as he sat down
to breakfast, he threw upon the table a roll of fifty napoleons,
saying to his children,

"Here is your New Year's gift! Divide, and buy anything you like."

And as they were looking at him, staring, stupid with astonishment,

"Well, what of it?" he added with an oath. "Isn't it well, once in
a while, to scatter the coins a little?"

Those unexpected thousand francs Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte applied
to the purchase of a shawl, which their mother had wished for
ten years.

She laughed and she cried with pleasure and emotion, the poor woman;
and, whilst draping it over her shoulders,

"Well, well, my dear children," she said: "your father, after all,
is not such a bad man."

Of which they did not seem very well convinced. "One thing is sure,"
remarked Mlle. Gilberte: "to permit himself such liberality, papa
must be awfully rich."

M. Favoral was not present at this scene. The yearly accounts kept
him so closely confined to his office, that he remained forty-eight
hours without coming home. A journey which he was compelled to
undertake for M. de Thaller consumed the balance of the week.

But