"I was saying, Monsieur Arthur, that, as I had received permission to go to Monsieur Gerbault's house, you will divine that I took advantage of it."

"Yes, indeed.—This fish is perfect; you make a great mistake not to eat it."

"Monsieur Gerbault, formerly a clerk in one of the government offices, has only a modest fortune; he is a widower with two daughters, to both of whom he has given an excellent education. Fanny is talented; she is a good musician, and knows English and Italian."

"And her sister?"

"Adolphine plays the piano, too, and sings quite well. She is very sweet and of a very amiable disposition; but, you see, I didn't pay any attention to the sister; I had eyes for Fanny alone. Her grace, her wit, her lovely eyes, all combined to turn my head. She saw it plainly enough, and, far from repelling me, she seemed to try to redouble her charms, in order to make me more in love with her than ever."

"The devil! she's a shrewd coquette!"

"Oh! no, monsieur! but it's her nature always to make herself attractive; she can't help it."

"Here's the capon au gros sel.—Now's the time for the champagne frappÉ. Corbleu! you'll drink some of this."

"But, monsieur——"

"It will give you strength, nerve. Nobody knows what may happen to-night; a man should always be ready for action."

"A year passed; I had the good fortune to make some lucky turns for Fanny; she had made nearly three thousand francs in railroad shares; she was overjoyed, and was already dreaming of an immense fortune. I had told her that I loved her, and she had replied, with a smile, that she suspected as much. Thereupon, I asked her if she would marry me, and she replied: 'My father can give only twenty thousand francs to each of his daughters, and you know what I have besides. That doesn't make much of an income.'

"'What does it matter?' said I; 'I love you with all my heart; if you had no marriage portion at all, I should none the less consider myself the happiest of men if I could obtain your hand.—I have twelve hundred francs a year,' I added, 'and my uncle pays me eighteen hundred; you see that we shall have enough to live comfortably.'

"Fanny listened to me, and seemed to reflect; but I had taken her hand and squeezed it, and she did not take it away.

"'Are you willing,' I said, 'that I should prefer my suit to your father to-morrow?'

"'That's not necessary,' she replied; 'we have time enough; and then, you need have no fear in that respect; father has told me a hundred times that he would not interfere with my choice; that he was sure that I would not marry anyone who would not make me happy.'

"For my part, I wanted to be married at once, but Fanny desired to add a little more to her capital before marrying, so that she might have a more substantial dowry to offer me. It was of no use for me to say that I cared nothing about that; I could not make her listen to reason."

"If you took that for love, my dear Gustave, you can hardly claim to be a connoisseur.—Here's your very good health!"

"Ah! monsieur; Fanny was always so amiable! her eyes always had such a sweet look in them when they met mine! she had such pretty, caressing little ways with me!"

"Yes, yes, I know. The whole battery of the petticoat file!"

"Six months more passed, and I implored Fanny to fix a date for our wedding. Unluckily, her operations in railroads no longer showed a profit; the shares she had bought had gone down; it was necessary to wait; and Fanny was angry at the way things were going on the Bourse.—It was about that time—— Ah! it was then that my misfortunes began."

"Courage, dear Gustave!—and another glass of MoËt! Do take a wing of this capon—just a bit of white meat. What! nothing? Well, then, sapristi! I will sacrifice myself and eat the whole bird. Never mind what the result may be; but I will drink, too, for I must wash it down.—Your health!"

"As I was saying, it was about this time that Monsieur Auguste MonlÉard made the acquaintance of the Gerbault family—at a ball, I believe; he asked and obtained from the father permission to come occasionally and play and sing with the young ladies. I did not know that until later, for I did not happen to meet him for some time. The very first time that I saw him, I had a presentiment that his presence in Monsieur Gerbault's house would be fatal to my love. This MonlÉard made a great parade; he had a cabriolet and a negro footman; indeed, he had, so it was said, forty thousand francs a year. All that would have been a matter of indifference to me, if I had not noticed that he was very attentive, very gallant, to Fanny. However, she continued to smile on me in the most charming way; but when I said to her: 'Fix a day for our wedding, I beg you, and let me speak to your father,' she replied: 'Oh! not yet; we have plenty of time; I must increase my capital first.'

"One morning, I had escaped from my duties at my uncle's, who scolded me sometimes because love led me to neglect business."

"Did your uncle approve your matrimonial plans?"

"Not very warmly; he had said to me several times: 'You're too young to marry; wait awhile.'

"But when he saw how dearly I loved Fanny, he finally said: 'Do as you please; but if I were in your place, I'd have nothing to do with a young woman who speculates in railroad stocks.'"

"I am much of your uncle's opinion."

"And he added: 'You know that I will not give you a sou to be married on, don't you?'

"I replied: 'And you know that I ask you for nothing but your affection.'"

"A noble reply! and one that binds you to nothing.—Have a glass of champagne."

"I have already had one."

"So much the more reason for taking another. I say, my boy, order us a PÉrigord macaroni, and a parfait À la vanille."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Waiter, how is the wedding party getting along?"

"They're at the second course, monsieur."

"They have not got beyond that!"

"What a delightful fellow this dear Gustave is! because he doesn't eat, he fancies that nobody else has any appetite."

"Is the bride eating, waiter?"

"Yes, monsieur; she's eating everything, I may say."

"Everything!"

Gustave angrily resumed his seat at the table, and held out his plate, saying to his companion:

"Very good! then I will eat, too! Give me some capon, Arthur; give me a lot of it!"

"Ah! good, good! spoken like a man! Now you're a man again! There's nothing left of the capon but one drumstick and the carcass, but they're the most delicate parts."

"Give them to me, give them to me! Oh! what a fool, what an idiot, I have been! To give way to despair for a woman who makes sport of me, who eats everything, when she knows that I am consumed by grief!"

"You acted like a fool, and that's just what I've been killing myself telling you."

"Give me some wine!"

"Bravo! let's drink! This champagne is delicious, and I know what I'm talking about."

"Yes, I will think no more of her, I will forget everything, I will love some other woman."

"Pardieu! that's the true way! In love especially, I believe in homoeopathy."

Gustave swallowed his glass of wine at a draught, then ate a few mouthfuls with a sort of avidity; but he soon pushed his plate away, and let his head fall on his breast, muttering:

"Oh! no, I shall never love another woman; I know well enough that it would be impossible."

"The deuce! here he is in another paroxysm of his passion! We shall have some difficulty in curing the dear boy; but we will succeed, even though that should necessitate our not leaving him for a second for ten years to come! Be yourself, Gustave, and finish your story, which, I presume, must be drawing near its end, and which interests me in the highest degree."

"Yes, yes; you are right!—I was saying that one morning, having gone to Monsieur Gerbault's house, I found Mademoiselle Adolphine alone. She greeted me with such a sorrowful air that I could not refrain from asking her what caused her sadness, and she replied: 'I suffer for your sake, I am grieved for you; for I know how dearly you love my sister, and I foresee how you will suffer when you learn that she is going to be married, and not to you.'

"'Great heaven!' I cried; 'can it be possible? Fanny, false to me! Fanny, give herself to another!'

"'Yes,' said Adolphine. 'It seems to me that it is especially cruel to let you hope on, when her marriage to Monsieur Auguste MonlÉard was decided on a fortnight ago.'

"'She is going to marry Monsieur MonlÉard!' I cried; 'she throws me over for that man! And she smiled at me only yesterday when I swore to love her all my life!'

"'That's the reason I determined to tell you all,' said Adolphine. 'I did not choose that you should be deceived any longer.'

"I need not tell you what a state of despair I was in. Adolphine tried in vain to comfort me; I could not believe in Fanny's treachery, and I insisted upon seeing her, and learning from her own lips that she preferred my rival to me.

"The next day, I found her alone. Can you believe that she greeted me with the same tranquillity, the same smile, as usual? So much so, that I cried: 'It isn't true, is it, Fanny, that you are going to marry another man?'—Thereupon, with a little pout to which she tried to give a fitting touch of melancholy, she replied: 'Yes, Gustave; it is true. Mon Dieu! you mustn't be angry with me. At all events, it will do no good, my friend; I have reflected. We haven't enough money to marry; we should have had to lead the sort of life in which one is always forced to count the cost before indulging in any pleasure, to see if it is compatible with one's means; and, frankly, it is not amusing to figure up whether one can afford to enjoy one's self a little, to buy a hat or a jewel which takes one's fancy. So I concluded that it was more sensible to marry Monsieur MonlÉard, who has a handsome fortune, and I have accepted his hand. But it seems to me that you shouldn't bear me a grudge, because I have acted like a sensible woman, and we can still remain friends.'

"'I, your friend!' I exclaimed, bursting into tears; 'when you give yourself to another, when you make me miserable for life!'

"I don't know what reply she made; but somebody came to tell her that the materials for her wedding gown had arrived, and she hurried away. Her calmness, her indifference, exasperated me. When I was alone, all sorts of incoherent ideas assailed me, but I know that I was determined to die. I was about to leave the house, fully resolved not to survive Fanny's treachery, when suddenly I felt a caressing hand on my arm, while a sweet voice said to me in an imploring tone: 'Be a man, Gustave, be brave; resolve to endure this misfortune, which seems to break your heart to-day. Time will allay your suffering—you will love another woman, who will love you in return, who will understand your heart; and later you will be happy—much happier, perhaps, than she, who thinks of nothing but money! But, I entreat you, promise me that you will live!'

"It was Adolphine who spoke to me thus. Her tears were flowing freely. When I found that my grief was shared, I felt a little relieved, for unhappiness makes a man selfish, and, when we are unhappy, it seems to us that other people ought to suffer as we do. I promised Fanny's sister to renounce my thoughts of death, and I left that house, to which I shall never return!"

"I drink to good little Adolphine's health! For my part, I love that feeling heart—I shall never forget her. And our dear uncle, what said he when he learned the result of your love affair?"

"My uncle? Oh! he doesn't believe in love, not he!"

"He was quite right not to believe in your Mademoiselle Fanny's."

"He has no confidence in women."

"He has probably made a study of them."

"In fact, when I told him that Fanny was to marry another, he had the heartlessness to retort that that was lucky for me."

"Frankly, I agree with him; for, after all, my boy as the damsel didn't love you——"

"Why, yes, she did love me, before she knew this MonlÉard."

"She gave you the preference when there was nobody else."

"He turned her head by his magnificence, his presents."

"It is much better for you that it happened before your marriage rather than after.—Here's to your health! Ah! here's the PÉrigord macaroni—with truffles on top—that's the checker! Do you know this way of preparing macaroni?"

"It seems that he hastened the ceremony after our last interview; for that was only twelve days ago, and to-day I learned that the wedding was to take place at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, to be followed by a banquet and ball here."

"Yes, and then you lost your head! You said to yourself: 'I will be there, I want to see what sort of a face the faithless creature will make when she sees me.'"

"True, monsieur, true. But they must have misinformed me as to the hour of the ceremony, for when I reached the church it was all over—they had gone."

"So much the better! that saved you one stab."

"Then I started off like a madman and ran all the way here, saying to myself: 'I simply must see her!'—And you know the rest, monsieur."

"I do, indeed; and if I hadn't been here, God knows what would have happened! But I'm a lucky dog; I almost always turn up when I'm wanted. Let us water the macaroni! I defy all the wedding parties in the place to dine better than me!"