he society of which the duke was the centre, every one
sought to imitate that accent, those disdainful intonations with an
affectation of simplicity.

Jenkins, finding the sitting rather long, had risen to take his
departure.

"Adieu, I must be off. We shall see you at the Nabob's?"

"Yes, I intend to be there for luncheon. Promised to bring him--what's
his name. Who was it? What? You know, for our big affair--ps, ps, ps.
Were it not for that, should gladly stay away. Real menagerie, that
house."

The Irishman, despite his benevolence, agreed that the society was
rather mixed at his friend's. But then! One could hardly blame him for
it. The poor fellow, he knew no better.

"Neither knows nor is willing to learn," remarked Monpavon with
bitterness. "Instead of consulting people of experience--ps, ps,
ps--first sponger that comes along. Have you seen the horses that Bois
l'Hery has persuaded him to buy? Absolute rubbish those animals. And he
paid twenty thousand francs for them. We may wager that Bois l'Hery got
them for six thousand."

"Oh, for shame--a nobleman!" said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
lofty soul refusing to believe in baseness.

Monpavon continued, without seeming to hear:

"All that because the horses came from Mora's stable."

"It is true that the dear Nabob's heart is very full of the duke. I am
about to make him very happy, therefore, when I inform him----"

The doctor paused, embarrassed.

"When you inform him of what, Jenkins?"

Somewhat abashed, Jenkins had to confess that he had obtained permission
from his excellency to present to him his friend Jansoulet. Scarcely
had he finished his sentence before a tall spectre, with flabby face
and hair and whiskers diversely coloured, bounded from the dressing-room
into the chamber, with his two hands folding round a fleshless but very
erect neck a dressing-gown of flimsy silk with violet spots, in which he
was wrapped like a sweetmeat in its paper. The most striking thing about
this mock-heroic physiognomy was a large curved nose all shiny with cold
cream, and an eye alive, keen, too young, too bright, for the heavy and
wrinkled eyelid which covered it. Jenkins's patients all had that eye.

Monpavon must indeed have been deeply moved to show himself thus devoid
of all prestige. In point of fact, with white lips and a changed voice
he addressed the doctor quickly, without the lisp this time, and in a
single outburst:

"Come now, _mon ch