ot mean that Madame de Godollo is
actually in the furniture business; but, at the time when Mademoiselle
Thuillier decided, by la Peyrade's advice, to manage the new house
herself, that little fellow, who hasn't all the ascendancy over her
mind he thinks he has, couldn't persuade her to move the family into
the splendid apartment where they received us yesterday. Mademoiselle
Brigitte objected that she should have to change her habits, and
that her friends and relations wouldn't follow her to such a distant
quarter--"

"It is quite certain," interrupted Madame Phellion, "that to make up
one's mind to hire a carriage every Sunday, one wants a prospect of
greater pleasure than can be found in that salon. When one thinks that,
except on the day of the famous dance of the candidacy, they never once
opened the piano in the rue Saint-Dominique!"

"It would have been, I am sure, most agreeable to the company to have a
talent like yours put in requisition," remarked Minard; "but those are
not ideas that could ever come into the mind of that good Brigitte.
She'd have seen two more candles to light. Five-franc pieces are her
music. So, when la Peyrade and Thuillier insisted that she should move
into the apartment in the Place de la Madeleine, she thought of nothing
but the extra costs entailed by the removal. She judged, rightly enough,
that beneath those gilded ceilings her old 'penates' might have a
singular effect."

"See how all things link together," remarked Phellion, "and how, from
the summits of society, luxury infiltrates itself, sooner or later,
through the lower classes, leading to the ruin of empires."

"You are broaching there, my dear commander," said Minard, "one of the
most knotty questions of political economy. Many good minds think, on
the contrary, that luxury is absolutely demanded in the interests of
commerce, which is certainly the life of States. In any case, this view,
which isn't yours, appears to have been that of Madame de Godollo, for,
they tell me, her apartment is very coquettishly furnished; and to coax
Mademoiselle Brigitte into the same path of elegance she made a proposal
to her as follows: 'A friend of mine,' she said, 'a Russian princess for
whom one of the first upholsterers has just made splendid furniture, is
suddenly recalled to Russia by the czar, a gentleman with whom no one
dares to trifle. The poor woman is therefore obliged to turn everything
she owns here into money as fast as pos