Thuillier; "and in these days that is the finest thing that can be
said of a man."

"It is Colleville who is making him laugh," cried Dutocq.

Just then Colleville and la Peyrade returned from the garden the very
best friends in the world.

"Messieurs," said Brigitte, "the soup and the King must never be kept
waiting; give your hand to the ladies."

Five minutes after this little pleasantry (issuing from the lodge of
her father the porter) Brigitte had the satisfaction of seeing her
table surrounded by the principal personages of this drama; the rest,
with the one exception of the odious Cerizet, arrived later.

The portrait of the former maker of canvas money-bags would be
incomplete if we omitted to give a description of one of her best
dinners. The physiognomy of the bourgeois cook of 1840 is, moreover,
one of those details essentially necessary to a history of manners and
customs, and clever housewives may find some lessons in it. A woman
doesn't make empty bags for twenty years without looking out for the
means to fill a few of them. Now Brigitte had one peculiar
characteristic. She united the economy to which she owed her fortune
with a full understanding of necessary expenses. Her relative
prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the
antipodes of avarice. In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she
couldn't be miserly. At her last dinner she had related how, after
struggling ten minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving
ten francs to a poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been