For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep books in various places,—­an hour here, an hour there, twice a week in one house, four times in another.

In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory; but the business did not suit him.

What he liked was the office from which one does not stir, the stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat.  The idea that he should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him.  He found himself out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten years; if he is made to trot straight before him.

So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little more water in the wine.

He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time.  And he did the same the next and the following days.

He started off the moment he had swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, came home at six o’clock, dined in haste, and disappeared again, not to return until about midnight.  He had hours of delirious joy, and moments of frightful discouragement.  Sometimes he seemed horribly uneasy.

“What can he be doing?” thought Mme. Favoral.

She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in fine humor.

“Well,” he answered, “am I not the master?  I am operating at the bourse, that’s all!”

He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened the poor woman as much.

“Are you not afraid,” she objected, “to lose all we have so painfully accumulated?  We have children—­”

He did not allow her to proceed.

“Do you take me for a child?” he exclaimed; “or do I look to you like a man so easy to be duped?  Mind to economize in your household expenses, and don’t meddle with my business.”

And he continued.  And he must have been lucky in his operations; for he had never been so pleasant at home.  All his ways had changed.  He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor’s, and was evidently trying to look elegant.  He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars.  He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday.  A mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her.  And so, the first time: 

“Be careful,” he said, “that you don’t find yourself penniless before Thursday.”

He became also more communicative.  Often during the dinner, he would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip.  He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken.  He named a number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme. Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.