kinds of cold meats, pyramids of fruit,
bottles of every shape, beneath the glare of two candelabra.

"Now, messieurs, escort the ladies."

In a moment we were in our places, the ladies seated, with the oldest
or most important of us men, the others standing, passing dishes,
chattering, drinking out of all the glasses, picking a mouthful from
every plate. I had M. Francis for my neighbor, and I was obliged to
listen to his spiteful remarks against M. Louis, of whom he is jealous
because he has such a fine situation in comparison with that he himself
holds in his played-out nobleman's household.

"He's a parvenu," he said to me in an undertone. "He owes his fortune
to his wife, to Madame Paul."

It seems that this Madame Paul is a housekeeper who has been twenty
years in the duke's service, and who understands, as no one else does,
how to make a certain pomade for certain infirmities that he has. Mora
cannot do without her. Remarking that fact, M. Louis paid his court to
the old woman, married her, although he is much younger than she; and,
in order not to lose his nurse _aux pommades_, His Excellency took
the husband for his valet de chambre. In my heart, notwithstanding what
I may have said to M. Francis, I considered that marriage perfectly
proper and in conformity with the healthiest morality, as both the
mayor and the cure had a hand in it. Moreover, that excellent repast,
consisting of choice and very expensive dishes which I did not even
know by name, had disposed my mind to indulgence and good humor. But
everybody was not in the same mood, for I heard M. Barreau's baritone
voice on the other side of the table, grumbling:

"Why does he meddle? Do I stick my nose into his business? In the first
place, it's a matter that concerns Bompain, not him. And what does it
amount to? What is it that he finds fault with me for? The butcher
sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two and sell
the other three. Where's the chef who doesn't do that? As if he
wouldn't do better to keep an eye on the big leakage above stairs,
instead of coming and spying about my basement. When I think that the
first-floor clique has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs' worth of
cigars in three months! Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask Noel if I
lie. And on the second floor, in Madame's apartments, there's a fine
mess of linen, dresses thrown aside after one wearing, jewels by the
handful, and pearls so thick that you crush 'e