"Yes, yes, my good Morange, it's understood. I will look in for you at
twelve o'clock."

Then Mathieu very carefully scrutinized a wash drawing of a very simple
but powerful steam thresher, an invention of his own, on which he had
been working for some time past, and which a big landowner of Beauce, M.
Firon-Badinier, was to examine during the afternoon.

The door of the master's private room was suddenly thrown wide open and
Beauchene appeared--tall, with a ruddy face, a narrow brow, and big
brown, protruding eyes. He had a rather large nose, thick lips, and a
full black beard, on which he bestowed great care, as he likewise did on
his hair, which was carefully combed over his head in order to conceal
the serious baldness that was already coming upon him, although he was
scarcely two-and-thirty. Frock-coated the first thing in the morning, he
was already smoking a big cigar; and his loud voice, his peals of gayety,
his bustling ways, all betokened an egotist and good liver still in his
prime, a man for whom money--capital increased and increased by the labor
of others--was the one only sovereign power.

"Ah! ah! it's ready, is it not?" said he; "Monsieur Firon-Badinier has
again written me that he will be here at three o'clock. And you know that
I'm going to take you to the restaurant with him this evening; for one
can never induce those fellows to give orders unless one plies them with
good wine. It annoys Constance to have it done here; and, besides, I
prefer to entertain those people in town. You warned Marianne, eh?"

"Certainly. She knows that I shall return by the
quarter-to-eleven-o'clock train."