"Do you take snuff?"

"No, dear madam, with many thanks."

"That is a pity," she answered, filling both nostrils. "It is the most
delightful habit."

She slipped her snuff-box back into her apron pocket, and went on--

"You are come not a bit too soon. Monseigneur had his second attack
yesterday; it was an awful attack, was it not, Monsieur Offenloch?"

"Furious indeed," answered the head butler gravely.

"It is not surprising," she continued, "when a man takes no nourishment.
Fancy, monsieur, that for two days he has never tasted broth!"

"Nor a glass of wine," added the major-domo, crossing his hands over his
portly, well-lined person.

As it seemed expected of me, I expressed my surprise, on which Tobias
Offenloch came to sit at my right hand, and said--

"Doctor, take my advice; order him a bottle a day of Marcobrunner."

"And," chimed in Marie Lagoutte, "a wing of a chicken at every meal. The
poor man is frightfully thin."

"We have got Marcobrunner sixty years in bottle," added the major-domo,
"for it is a mistake of Madame Offenloch's to suppose that the French