“Once they tried to quiz me, Blondet.  I told them a long-winded story that lasted from nine o’clock till midnight, one tale inside another.  I had just brought my twenty-ninth personage upon the scene (the newspapers have plagiarized with their ’continued in our next’), when old Matifat, who as host still held out, snored like the rest, after blinking for five minutes.  Next day they all complimented me upon the ending of my tale!

“These tradespeople’s society consisted of M. and Mme. Cochin, Mme. Desroches, and a young Popinot, still in the drug business, who used to bring them news of the Rue des Lombards. (You know him, Finot.) Mme. Matifat loved the arts; she bought lithographs, chromo-lithographs, and colored prints,—­all the cheapest things she could lay her hands on.  The Sieur Matifat amused himself by looking into new business speculations, investing a little capital now and again for the sake of the excitement.  Florine had cured him of his taste for the Regency style of thing.  One saying of his will give you some idea of the depths in my Matifat.  ’Art thou going to bed, my nieces?’ he used to say when he wished them good-night, because (as he explained) he was afraid of hurting their feelings with the more formal ‘you.’

“The daughter was a girl with no manner at all.  She looked rather like a superior sort of housemaid.  She could get through a sonata, she wrote a pretty English hand, knew French grammar and orthography—­a complete commercial education, in short.  She was impatient enough to be married and leave the paternal roof, finding it as dull at home as a lieutenant finds the nightwatch at sea; at the same time, it should be said that her watch lasted through the whole twenty-four hours.  Desroches or Cochin junior, a notary or a lifeguardsman, or a sham English lord,—­any husband would have suited her.  As she so obviously knew nothing of life, I took pity upon her, I determined to reveal the great secret of it.  But, pooh! the Matifats shut their doors on me.  The bourgeois and I shall never understand each other.”

“She married General Gouraud,” said Finot.

“In forty-eight hours, Godefroid de Beaudenord, late of the diplomatic corps, saw through the Matifats and their nefarious designs,” resumed Bixiou.  “Rastignac happened to be chatting with the frivolous Baroness when Godefroid came in to give his report to Malvina.  A word here and there reached his ear; he guessed the matter on foot, more particularly from Malvina’s look of satisfaction that it was as she had suspected.  Then Rastignac actually stopped on till two o’clock in the morning.  And yet there are those that call him selfish!  Beaudenord took his departure when the Baroness went to bed.