"It's customary. We have a pike; salmon would have been better, but as the very smallest ones are worth from fifteen to twenty francs----"

"What an outrage! And to think that there are people who eat salmon!"

"So I had a pike instead, and for that we must have a caper sauce."

"Why can't it be eaten without sauce?"

"It wouldn't be good.--Flanking the fish we shall have cutlets with peas and a _tourte aux boulettes_."

"The twenty-four-sou kind, I trust?"

"For eleven people! the idea! The two-franc size, and that will be very scant!"

"Well, I hope that that's all."

"I should think not! that's only the first course. Now we come to the second."

"Great G.o.d!"

"For your joint, you have ribs of beef; then, for vegetables, on one side string beans, on the other spinach."

"Why need you have more vegetables? You have served them already with your julienne, you told me, so you don't want them again."

"Julienne is a soup, not a meat course. Then----"

"What! is there something more?"

"Macaroni; and as it is always necessary to have sweets----"

"Take my head at once!"

"No, my dear; that wouldn't be good. We shall have a _creme a la vanille_. You must give me some sugar; I haven't any left."

"Nor I, either!"

"Well, there's plenty at the grocer's."

"No, I still have a few pieces of candied sugar."

"Give them to Goth.--For dessert, such fruit as is in season."

"Prunes?"

"This is summer time, and you don't give your guests dried fruit. Then cheese----"

"Marolles--that's the best."

"Nonsense! your marolles smells up the whole room. Roquefort, and biscuit."

"Enough! enough! you may as well kill me!"

"Oh! you forgot the salad, madame."

Monsieur Mirotaine, in a rage, aimed a kick at Goth, shouting:

"There's salad for you! That will teach you to ask for something else!"

Goth began to cry, and demanded her wages. Madame Mirotaine succeeded in pacifying her, and sent her off to her kitchen; then she berated her husband for giving way so to his temper, and told him that she would leave him if he interfered again in the details of housekeeping.

Monsieur Mirotaine, who set great store by his wife for the very reason that she led him by the nose, begged her pardon and added, with a sigh:

"It's this dinner that irritates me, and makes a brute of me!"

"Just remember that you are going to get rid of your daughter--to marry her to a millionaire Italian count, Count Miflores, who will give us some superb presents, I am sure, when he gives her her wedding gift."

"You think that he'll give us something?"

"Madame Putiphar feels sure of it."

"Then it's all right!"

"It is well worth a dinner.--By the way, monsieur, have you thought about the wine?"

"The wine! why, I have some in the cellar."

"Yes, our regular table wine, which is very bad."

"The more water you put in it, the better it is."

"But we must have claret with the second course, and champagne at dessert; everybody does."

"That's it: everybody does! Luckily, I know a man who makes champagne at one franc twenty-five the bottle."

"It must be perfectly awful stuff!"

"He a.s.sured me that it was delicious and foamed like beer."

"As for claret, somebody sent you a basket of twenty-five bottles, either in payment of a debt, or as a present; but I know that it's excellent."

"Yes; but I am keeping it for some time when I may be sick."

"You will give me two bottles of it, monsieur; you must."

"Two bottles! isn't one enough?"

"No; we shall be eleven at table."

"As many as that?"