t I will," cried the little horror, grabbing at everything
simultaneously with both hands.

"Oh, fie, fie!" said grandpapa gently. "Take Maksi out for a ride and
let the lacquey go with him instead of his tutor!" The old gentleman
then pushed the little round table aside and signalled to the footman
that he was to put all the dishes carefully away, as he should want to
see them again on the morrow. The footman conscientiously obeyed this
command--which was given regularly every day--and locked up all the
dishes well aware that he would get a sound jacketting if he failed to
produce a single one of them when required to do so.

The old man knew well enough that there was not a servant in the house
who, for any reward on earth, would think of touching any food that had
ever lain on his table; indeed, they held it in such horror that they
used regularly to distribute it among the poor. In order therefore that
the very beggars might have nothing to thank him for, he had the food
kept till it was almost rotten before he let them have it. As for his
own family, he had not dined at the same table with them for ten years.

It was certainly not a sociable family. For example, the old gentleman's
widowed daughter, red-cheeked Madame Langai, did not exchange a single
word with her father for weeks at a time. At first he had expected her
to remain in the same room with him till nine o'clock every evening,
dealing out cards for him or boring herself to death in some other way
for his amusement. She endured it for a whole month without a word; but
at last, one evening, at seven o'clock, she appeared before him in
evening dress and said that she was going to the theatre.

Old Lapussa glared at her with all his eyes.

"To the theatre?" cried he.

"Yes, I have ordered a box."

"Really? Well, I hope you will enjoy yourself!"

The lady quitted him with a shrug. She knew that from that moment she
would inherit a million less than her elder brother; but nevertheless
she went to the theatre regularly every day, and never stirred from her
box so long as there was any one on the stage who had a word to say.

The Lapussa family was of too recent an origin for the great world to
take much notice of it, and the fame of its fabulous wealth went hand in
hand with the rumour of a sordid avarice which was not a recommendable
quality in the eyes of the true gentry. The Lapussas were, in fact, not
of gentle blood at all, but simply rich. Madam