say that I request the honor of five minutes' interview."

The little woman's eyes had all this time been getting rounder and
blacker. She was evidently confounded by my friend's grandiloquence.

"_Ah! mon Dieu! M'sieur_," she said, nervously, "my husband is in the
kitchen. It is a busy day with us, you understand--but I will send
for him."

And she forthwith despatched a waiter for "Monsieur Choucru."

Müller seized me by the arm.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed, in a very audible aside, "did you hear? She is
his wife! She is Madame Choucru?"

"Well, and what of that?"

"What of that, indeed? _Mais, mon ami_, how can you ask the question?
Have you no eyes? Look at her! Such a remarkably handsome woman--such a
_tournure_--such eyes--such a figure for an illustration! Only conceive
the effect of Madame Choucru--in medallion!"

"Oh, magnificent!" I replied. "Magnificent--in medallion."

But I could not, for the life of me, imagine what he was driving at.

"And it would make the fortune of the _Toison d'Or_" he added, solemnly.

To which I replied that it would undoubtedly do so.