"Colleville, messieurs, has drunk to _friendship_. I now drink, in
this most generous wine, To my friends!"

An hurrah, full of heartiness, greeted that fine sentiment, but Dutocq
remarked aside to Theodose:--

"It is a shame to pour such wine down the throats of such people."

"Ah! if we could only make such wine as that!" cried Zelie, making her
glass ring by the way in which she sucked down the Spanish liquid.
"What fortunes we could get!"

Zelie had now reached her highest point of incandescence, and was
really alarming.

"Yes," replied Minard, "but ours is made."

"Don't you think, sister," said Brigitte to Madame Thuillier, "that we
had better take coffee in the salon?"

Madame Thuillier obediently assumed the air of mistress of the house,
and rose.

"Ah! you are a great wizard," said Flavie Colleville, accepting la
Peyrade's arm to return to the salon.

"And yet I care only to bewitch you," he answered. "I think you more
enchanting than ever this evening."

"Thuillier," she said, to evade the subject, "Thuillier made to think