the season of spring.  An immense roar of
laughter was his reward; he found that he had
unconsciously strayed into a wasps'-nest of
hardened and slightly-tipsy bachelors.  When
a man tumbles into the water, his first movement
is to seize a branch. Vigneron snatched at
Léon, as one of his own sort, calling on him to
testify to the truth.

Léon shook his head, and said, "My good
old fellow, you have seen here to-night a
tolerable number of pretty girls?"

"Enormous."

"Not so many as that. But there were
seven or eight who may pass for handsome,
belonging to honourable families, well educated
in the best schools or convents, who are not
deficient either in health, intellect, or grace,
and yet who, in spite of those advantages, have
been dragged through all the ball-rooms of
Paris without finding a man to marry them!"

"What!" exclaimed Vigneron.  "Has
human avarice made such awful progress as that?
Are we fallen so low that, for want of a little
cash——"

"Stop!  You are going to waste your breath
on a fine bit of declamation. The vile metal,
is it not?  Simple-minded man of the fields!
It is not the vile metal which is wanting.
They are handsomely portioned, those
turtle-doves! If they were not, things would work
smoothly of themselves, and my observation
would be common-place and pointless.  But
they have portions, in ready cash.  The poorest
of the seven has eighty thousand francs paid in
at the notary's; the richest has four hundred
thousand in "obligations" on the Railway du
Nord; the five others may be represented by a
sliding scale between those two figures. And
yet no man— I mean none of the men whom
they could accept—will have anything to do with
them or their money.  An obstinate refusal is
offered to these tempting little personages, and
to these dowries which would make provincial
suitors open wide both their eyes and their
mouth.  What do you think of it?"

"I think that you are making game of me,
and that your treatment is not what it should
be towards a friend who ought to have been in
bed six hours ago."

"Ask these gentlemen. They will all tell
you, with a single voice, that mine is not the
only house in which the same phenomenon is
manifested.  Everywhere it is the same story;
make a tour through the salons of Paris, and
you will see. You country-folk, when you see
a girl with two hundred thousand francs wearing
the crown of St. Catharine, become distrustful,
suspect hidden faults, and say to yourselves that
there is something underneath the surface.  You
inquire whether her parents have not figured
at the assizes, whether the lady be not epileptic
or have been too familiar with one of her young
cousins. In Paris, my lad, nobody is now
surprised to meet with single women of five-and-
twenty.  It is well known that they and their
dowry have run up to seed, because the men
will have nothing to say to them."

"But why not?"

"Ask these gentlemen! You have before
you a whole batch of bachelors.  I am married.
If I were to plead the cause of celibacy, I should
appear to grumble at my lot, and to find fault
with somebody, which is far from my intention,
and thought."

A baby of eighteen, who smoked a big cigar
while he coaxed his hopes of a moustache,
addressed the company, and coolly said, "Word
of honour, my dear monsieur, your innocence
surprises me.  Daddy Thibautodé, the author
of my being, left me a hundred thousand francs
a year.  A young man like me, settled on the
pavé of Paris, cannot do with a centime less.
I spend half of it on my stable; and yet I have
only three race-horses, or, strictly speaking, two
and a half. The rest allows me to be loved, at
second hand, for my own sake, as amant de
cœur, by the flower of the world of crinoline.
Yesterday I was friends with Nana, whom I
shall leave to-morrow for Tata, unless the azure
breeze of fancy wafts me into Zaza's lap.  I shall
not ruin myself, never fear!  I know my
arithmetic, and that is all I ever learnt at school.  I
expect to go on quietly in that way, to the end
of my life, after the example of several
venerable gentlemen who now adorn the Boulevard.
Confess that I should be the biggest of
simpletons to share this modest income with an
everyday prude and a heap of little Thibautodés, who
would not afford me the slightest amusement."

Poor honest Vigneron was deeply disgusted
with this precocious mannikin, rotten before he
was ripe, and was setting to work to give him
a lesson; but his speech was put down with so
unanimous a groan, that eloquence to that effect
was superfluous.  When the row subsided, a
handsome fellow of five-and-thirty took up the
discourse, and said:

"Don't believe, monsieur, that stupid
selfishness and a taste for easy pleasures are the sole
reasons which deter us from marrying.  I am
neither a selfish nor an idle man.  I have worked
for my own living all my life, and my only
regret is that I cannot work for a family.  But
consider my position, and tell me what you
would do in my place.  I have raised myself,
not without difficulty, to an appointment of
twelve thousand francs a year.  My income
suffices to maintain me.  If——"

"One moment," Vigneron interposed.  "Marry
a wife who will bring you as much.  That is
the way to make comfortable establishments."

"In the country, perhaps; in Paris, no.
You are not aware, monsieur, what Paris has
become within the last few years.  A wife who
brought me twelve thousand francs a year,
would add more to my expenses than to my
income. In the first place, she would expect to
spend, herself, in dress, furniture, dinner-giving,
show, the full interest of her capital.  I should
be well off if she abstained from trenching upon
my own earnings.  The position which I
occupy opens to her the doors of a certain class
of society; by what reason should I be able to
persuade her not to enter it?  She would