"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 some one here, some one of note, you would know how to do things properly?"
"I think so."
He remained silent for a moment, like a man who thinks before taking an important decision, and then:
"I wish to invite a few persons to dinner," he said. She could scarcely believe her ears. He had never received at his table any one but a fellow-clerk at the factory, named Desclavettes, who had just married the daughter of a dealer in bronzes, and succeeded to his business.
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Mme. Favoral.
"So it is. The question is now, How much would a first-class dinner cost, the best of every thing?"
"That depends upon the number of guests."
"Say three or four persons."
The poor woman set herself to figuring diligently for some time; and then timidly, for the sum seemed formidable to her:
"I think," she began, "that with a hundred francs "
Her husband commenced whistling.
"You'll need that for the wines alone;' he interrupted. "Do you take me for a fool? But here, don't let us go into figures. Do as your parents did when they did their best; and, if it's well, I shall not complain of the expense. Take a good cook, hire a waiter who understands his business well."
She was utterly confounded; and yet she was not at the end of her surprises.
Soon M. Favoral declared that their table-ware was not suitable, and that he must buy a new set. He discovered a hundred purchases to be made, and swore that he would make them. He even hesitated a moment about renewing the parlor furniture, although it was in tolerably good condition still, and was a present from his father-in-law.
And, having finished his inventory:
"And you," he asked his wife: "what dress will you wear?"
"I have my black silk dress -"
He stopped her.
"Which means that you have none at all," he said. "Very well. You must go this very day and get yourself one, - a very handsome, a magnificent one; and you'll send it to be made to a fashionable dressmaker. And at the same time you had better get some little suits for Maxence and Gilberte. Here are a thousand francs."
Completely bewildered:
"Who in the world are you going to invite, then?" she asked.
"The Baron and the Baroness de Thaller," he replied with an emphasis full of conviction. "So try and distinguish yourself. Our fortune is at stake."
That this dinner was a matter of considerable import, Mme. Favoral could not doubt when she saw her husband's fabulous liberality continue without flinching for a number of days.
Ten times of an afternoon he would come home to tell his wife the name of some dish that had been mentioned before him, or to consult her on the subject of some exotic viand he had just noticed in some shop-window. Daily he brought home wines of the most fantastic vintages, - those wines which dealers manufacture for the special use of verdant fools, and which they sell in odd-shaped bottles previously overlaid with secular dust and cobwebs.
He subjected to a protracted cross-examination the cook whom Mme.
Favoral had engaged, and demanded that she should enumerate the houses where she had cooked. He absolutely required the man who was to wait at the table to exhibit the dress-coat he was to wear.
The great day having come, he did not stir from the house, going and coming from the kitchen to the dining-room, uneasy, agitated, unable to stay in one place. He breathed only when he had seen the table set and loaded with the new china he had purchased and the magnificent silver he had gone to hire in person. And when his young wife made her appearance, looking lovely in her new dress, and leading by the hands the two children, Maxence and Gilberte, in their new suits:
"That's perfect," he exclaimed, highly delighted. "Nothing could be better. Now, let our four guests come!
They arrived a few minutes before seven, in two carriages, the magnificence of which astonished the Rue St. Gilles.
And, the presentations over, Vincent Favoral had at last the ineffable satisfaction to see seated at his table the Baron and Baroness de Thaller, M. Saint Pavin, who called himself a financial editor, and M. Jules Jottras, of the house of Jottras & Brother.
It was with an eager curiosity that Mme. Favoral observed these people whom her husband called his friends, and whom she saw herself for the first time.
M. de Thaller, who could not then have been much over thirty, was already a man without any particular age.
Cold, stiff, aping evidently the English style, he expressed himself in brief sentences, and with a strong foreign accent.
Nothing to surprise on his countenance. He had the forehead prominent, the eyes of a dull blue, and the nose very thin. His scanty hair was spread over the top of his head with labored symmetry; and his red, thick, and carefully-trimmed whiskers seemed to engross much of his attention.
M. Saint Pavin had not the same stiff manner. Careless in his dress, he lacked breeding. He was a robust fellow, dark and bearded, with thick lips, the eye bright and prominent, spreading upon the table-cloth broad hands ornamented at the joints with small tufts of hair, speaking loud, laughing noisily, eating much and drinking more.
By the side of him, M. Jules Jottras, although looking like a fashion-plate, did not show to much advantage. Delicate, blonde, sallow, almost beardless, M. Jottras distinguished himself only by a sort of unconscious impudence, a harmless cynicism, and a sort of spasmodic giggle, that shook the eye-glasses which he wore stuck over his nose.