Poirier—­I will fill your place by a woman.  But in the mean time, as you still have eight days in my service, I wish you to prepare my menu.

Vatel—­I will blow my brains out before I dishonor my name.

Poirier [aside]—­Another fellow who adores his name! [Aloud.] You may burn your brains, Monsieur Vatel, but don’t burn your sauces.—­Well, bon jour! [Exit Vatel.] And now to write invitations to my old cronies of the Rue des Bourdonnais.  Monsieur le Marquis de Presles, I’ll soon take the starch out of you.

[He goes out whistling the first couplet of ’Monsieur and Madame Denis.’]

A CONTEST OF WILLS

From ‘The Fourchambaults’

Madame Fourchambault—­Why do you follow me?

Fourchambault—­I’m not following you:  I’m accompanying you.

Madame Fourchambault—­I despise you; let me alone.  Oh! my poor mother little thought what a life of privation would be mine when she gave me to you with a dowry of eight hundred thousand francs!

Fourchambault—­A life of privation—­because I refuse you a yacht!

Madame Fourchambault—­I thought my dowry permitted me to indulge a few whims, but it seems I was wrong.

Fourchambault—­A whim costing eight thousand francs!

Madame Fourchambault—­Would you have to pay for it?

Fourchambault—­That’s the kind of reasoning that’s ruining me.

Madame Fourchambault—­Now he says I’m ruining him!  His whole fortune comes from me.

Fourchambault—­Now don’t get angry, my dear.  I want you to have everything in reason, but you must understand the situation.

Madame Fourchambault—­The situation?

Fourchambault—­I ought to be a rich man; but thanks to the continual expenses you incur in the name of your dowry, I can barely rub along from day to day.  If there should be a sudden fall in stocks, I have no reserve with which to meet it.

Madame Fourchambault—­That can’t be true!  Tell me at once that it isn’t true, for if it were so you would be without excuse.

Fourchambault—­I or you?

Madame Fourchambault—­This is too much!  Is it my fault that you don’t understand business?  If you haven’t had the wit to make the best use of your way of living and your family connections—­any one else—­

Fourchambault—­Quite likely!  But I am petty enough to be a scrupulous man, and to wish to remain one.

Madame Fourchambault—­Pooh!  That’s the excuse of all the dolts who can’t succeed.  They set up to be the only honest fellows in business.  In my opinion, Monsieur, a timid and mediocre man should not insist upon remaining at the head of a bank, but should turn the position over to his son.