He stopped her.

"Which means that you have none at all," he said. "Very well. You
must go this very day and get yourself one,--a very handsome, a
magnificent one; and you'll send it to be made to a fashionable
dressmaker. And at the same time you had better get some little
suits for Maxence and Gilberte. Here are a thousand francs."

Completely bewildered:

"Who in the world are you going to invite, then?" she asked.

"The Baron and the Baroness de Thaller," he replied with an emphasis
full of conviction. "So try and distinguish yourself. Our fortune
is at stake."

That this dinner was a matter of considerable import, Mme. Favoral
could not doubt when she saw her husband's fabulous liberality
continue without flinching for a number of days.

Ten times of an afternoon he would come home to tell his wife the
name of some dish that had been mentioned before him, or to consult
her on the subject of some exotic viand he had just noticed in some
shop-window. Daily he brought home wines of the most fantastic
vintages,--those wines which dealers manufacture for the special
use of verdant fools, and which they sell in odd-shaped bottles
previously overlaid with secular dust and cobwebs.

He subjected to a protracted cross-examination the cook whom Mme.
Favoral had engaged, and demanded that she should enumerate the