Other People's Money, Emile Gaboriau [best ebook reader txt] 📗

the stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat.  The idea that he should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him.  He found himself out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten years; if he is made to trot straight before him.

So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little more water in the wine.

He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time.  And he did the same the next and the following days.

He started off the moment he had swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, came home at six o’clock, dined in haste, and disappeared again, not to return until about midnight.  He had hours of delirious joy, and moments of frightful discouragement.  Sometimes he seemed horribly uneasy.

“What can he be doing?” thought Mme. Favoral.

She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in fine humor.

“Well,” he answered, “am I not the master?  I am operating at the bourse, that’s all!”

He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened the poor woman as much.

“Are you not afraid,” she objected, “to lose all we have so painfully accumulated?  We have children—”

He did not allow her to proceed.

“Do you take me for a child?” he exclaimed; “or do I look to you like a man so easy to be duped?  Mind to economize in your household expenses, and don’t meddle with my business.”

And he continued.  And he must have been lucky in his operations; for he had never been so pleasant at home.  All his ways had changed.  He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor’s, and was evidently trying to look elegant.  He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars.  He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday.  A mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her.  And so, the first time: 

“Be careful,” he said, “that you don’t find yourself penniless before Thursday.”

He became also more communicative.  Often during the dinner, he would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip.  He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken.  He named a number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme. Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.

There was one especially, who seemed to inspire him with a profound respect, a boundless admiration, and of whom he never tired of talking.  He was, said he, a man of his age,—M. de Thaller, the Baron de Thaller.

“This one,” he kept repeating, “is really mad:  he is rich, he has ideas, he’ll go far.  It would be a great piece of luck if I could get him to do something for me!”

Until at last one day: 

“Your parents were very rich once?” he asked his wife.

“I have heard it said,” she answered.

“They spent a good deal of money, did they not?  They had friends:  they gave dinner-parties.”

“Yes, they received a good deal of company.”

“You remember that time?”

“Surely I do.”

“So that if I should take a fancy to receive some one here, some one of note, you would know how to do things properly?”

“I think so.”

He remained silent for a moment, like a man who thinks before taking an important decision, and then: 

“I wish to invite a few persons to dinner,” he said.  She could scarcely believe her ears.  He had never received at his table any one but a fellow-clerk at the factory, named Desclavettes, who had just married the daughter of a dealer in bronzes, and succeeded to his business.

“Is it possible?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.

“So it is.  The question is now, how much would a first-class dinner cost, the best of every thing?”

“That depends upon the number of guests.”

“Say three or four persons.”

The poor woman set herself to figuring diligently for some time; and then timidly, for the sum seemed formidable to her: 

“I think,” she began, “that with a hundred francs—”

Her husband commenced whistling.

“You’ll need that for the wines alone;” he interrupted.  “Do you take me for a fool?  But here, don’t let us go into figures.  Do as your parents did when they did their best; and, if it’s well, I shall not complain of the expense.  Take a good cook, hire a waiter who understands his business well.”

She was utterly confounded; and yet she was not at the end of her surprises.

Soon M. Favoral declared that their table-ware was not suitable, and that he must buy a new set.  He discovered a hundred purchases to be made, and swore that he would make them.  He even hesitated a moment about renewing the parlor furniture, although it was in tolerably good condition still, and was a present from his father-in-law.

And, having finished his inventory: 

“And you,” he asked his wife:  “what dress will you wear?”

“I have my black silk dress—”

He stopped her.

“Which means that you have none at all,” he said.  “Very well.  You must go this very day and get yourself one,—a very handsome, a magnificent one; and you’ll send it to be made to a fashionable dressmaker.  And at the same time you had better get some little suits for Maxence and Gilberte.  Here are a thousand francs.”

Completely bewildered: 

“Who in the world are you going to invite, then?” she asked.

“The Baron and the Baroness de Thaller,” he replied with an emphasis full of conviction.  “So try and distinguish yourself.  Our fortune is at stake.”

That this dinner was a matter of considerable import, Mme. Favoral could not doubt when she saw her husband’s fabulous liberality continue without flinching for a number of days.

Ten times of an afternoon he would come home to tell his wife the name of some dish that