the buffet seriously, and
eat their first meal of the day after midnight. The Bois-l'Herys are
well posted as to houses where there is a buffet. They will tell you
that you get a very good supper at the Austrian embassy, that the
Spanish embassy is a little careless in the matter of wines, and that
the Minister of Foreign Affairs gives you the best _chaud-froid de
volailles_. Such is the life of that curious household. Nothing of all
they have is sewn on; everything is basted or pinned. A gust of wind,
and away it all goes. But at all events they are sure of losing
nothing. That is what gives the marquis that _blagueur_, Pere
Tranquille air, as he looks you in the face with both hands in his
pockets, as much as to say: "Well, what then? What can you do to me?"

And the little tiger, in the aforesaid attitude, with his prematurely
old, vicious child's face, copied his master so perfectly that it
seemed to me as if I were looking at the man himself sitting in our
administrative council, facing the Governor, and overwhelming him with
his cynical jests. After all, we must agree that Paris is a wonderful
great city, for any one to be able to live here in that way for fifteen
years, twenty years of tricks and dodges and throwing dust in people's
eyes, without everybody finding him out, and to go on making a
triumphant entry into salons in the wake of a footman shouting his name
at the top of his voice: "Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery."

You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe
all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is
when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance,
happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of
confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:

"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to
take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."

"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is
consuming us."

"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or
go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account
over yonder. It will be a terrible time."

I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred
thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was
receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the
worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected wh