"VESQUIER," suggests DAUBINET.

"Yes, Mister VESQUIER--didn't he say we were to go and 'see the
calves'?--_C'est à dire_," I translate, in despair at DAUBINET's
utterly puzzled look, "_que nous irons avec lui à la ferme pour voir
les veaux_--the calves."--"Ha! ha! ha!" Off goes DAUBINET into a roar.
Evidently I've made some extraordinary mistake. It flashes across me
suddenly. Owing to M. VESQUIER's speaking such excellent English, it
never occurred to me that he had suddenly interpolated the French word
"_caves_" as an anglicised French word into his speech to me. This
accounts for his suppression of the final consonant.

[Illustration]

"Ah!" I exclaim, suddenly enlightened; "I see--the cellars."

"_Pou ni my?_" cries DAUBINET, still in ecstasies, and speaking
Russian or modern Greek. "_Da!_--of course--_c'est ça--nous
allons voir les caves_--the cellars--where all the champagne is.
_Karrascho!_"

At this moment M. VESQUIER returns. He will just take us through the
offices to his private rooms. Clerks at work everywhere. Uncommonly
like an English place of business: not much outward difference between
French clerks in a large house like this and English ones in one of
our great City houses; only this isn't the City, but is, so to speak,
more Manchesterian or Liverpoolian, with the immense advantage of
being remarkably clean, curiously quiet, and in a pure and fresh
atmosphere. I don't clearly understand what M. VESQUIER's business is,
but as he seems to take for granted that I know all about it, I trust