me home at six o'clock, dined in haste, and disappeared
again, not to return until about midnight. He had hours of delirious
joy, and moments of frightful discouragement. Sometimes he seemed
horribly uneasy.

"What can he be doing?" thought Mme. Favoral.

She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in
fine humor.

"Well," he answered, "am I not the master? I am operating at the
bourse, that's all!"

He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened
the poor woman as much.

"Are you not afraid," she objected, "to lose all we have so
painfully accumulated? We have children--"

He did not allow her to proceed.

"Do you take me for a child?" he exclaimed; "or do I look to you
like a man so easy to be duped? Mind to economize in your household
expenses, and don't meddle with my business."

And he continued. And he must have been lucky in his operations;
for he had never been so pleasant at home. All his ways had changed.
He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor's, and was evidently
trying to look elegant. He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars.
He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and
took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday. A
mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her. And so, the first
time:

"Be careful," he said, "that you don't find yourself penniless
before Thursday."

He became also more communicative. Often during the dinner, he
would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip.
He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken. He named a
number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme.
Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.

There was one especially, who seemed to inspire him with a profound
respect, a boundless admiration, and of whom he never tired of
talking. He was, said he, a man of his age,--M. de Thaller, the
Baron de Thaller.

"This one," he kept repeating, "is really mad: he is rich, he has
ideas, he'll go far. It would be a great piece of luck if I could
get him to do something for me!"

Until at last one day:

"Your parents were very rich once?" he asked his wife.

"I have heard it said," she answered.

"They spent a good deal of money, did they not? They had friends:
they gave dinner-parties."

"Yes, they received a good deal of company."

"You remember that time?"

"Surely I do."

"So that if I should take a fancy to receive