“Isn’t this really fine?” said she.  “The Duke has spent all the money on it that he got out of floating a company, of which the shares all sold at a premium.  He is no fool, is my little Duke.  There is nothing like a man who has been a grandee in his time for turning coals into gold.  Just before dinner the notary brought me the title-deeds to sign and the bills receipted!—­They are all a first-class set in there —­d’Esgrignon, Rastignac, Maxime, Lenoncourt, Verneuil, Laginski, Rochefide, la Palferine, and from among the bankers Nucingen and du Tillet, with Antonia, Malaga, Carabine, and la Schontz; and they all feel for you deeply.—­Yes, old boy, and they hope you will join them, but on condition that you forthwith drink up to two bottles full of Hungarian wine, Champagne, or Cape, just to bring you up to their mark.—­My dear fellow, we are all so much on here, that it was necessary to close the Opera.  The manager is as drunk as a cornet-a-piston; he is hiccuping already.”

“Oh, Josepha!——­” cried the Baron.

“Now, can anything be more absurd than explanations?” she broke in with a smile.  “Look here; can you stand six hundred thousand francs which this house and furniture cost?  Can you give me a bond to the tune of thirty thousand francs a year, which is what the Duke has just given me in a packet of common sugared almonds from the grocer’s?—­a pretty notion that——­”

“What an atrocity!” cried Hulot, who in his fury would have given his wife’s diamonds to stand in the Duc d’Herouville’s shoes for twenty-four hours.

“Atrocity is my trade,” said she.  “So that is how you take it?  Well, why don’t you float a company?  Goodness me! my poor dyed Tom, you ought to be grateful to me; I have thrown you over just when you would have spent on me your widow’s fortune, your daughter’s portion.—­What, tears!  The Empire is a thing of the past—­I hail the coming Empire!”

She struck a tragic attitude, and exclaimed: 

  “They call you Hulot!  Nay, I know you not—­”

And she went into the other room.

Through the door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and the fragrance of a banquet of the choicest description.

The singer peeped through the partly open door, and seeing Hulot transfixed as if he had been a bronze image, she came one step forward into the room.

“Monsieur,” said she, “I have handed over the rubbish in the Rue Chauchat to Bixiou’s little Heloise Brisetout.  If you wish to claim your cotton nightcap, your bootjack, your belt, and your wax dye, I have stipulated for their return.”

This insolent banter made the Baron leave the room as precipitately as Lot departed from Gomorrah, but he did not look back like Mrs. Lot.

Hulot went home, striding along in a fury, and talking to himself; he found his family still playing the game of whist at two sous a point, at which he left them.  On seeing her husband return, poor Adeline imagined something dreadful, some dishonor; she gave her cards to Hortense, and led Hector away into the very room where, only five hours since, Crevel had foretold her the utmost disgrace of poverty.