“He is a parvenu,” he muttered to me in a low voice.  “He owes his fortune to his wife, to Mme. Paul.”

It appears that this Mme. Paul is a housekeeper, who has been in the duke’s establishment for twenty years, and who excels beyond all others in the preparation for him of a certain ointment for an affection to which he is subject.  She is indispensable to Mora.  Recognising this, M. Louis made love to the old lady, married her though much younger than she, and in order not to lose his sick-nurse and her ointments, his excellency engaged the husband as valet de chambre.  At bottom, in spite of what I said to M. Francis, for my own part I thought the proceeding quite praiseworthy and conformable to the loftiest morality, since the mayor and the priest had a finger in it.  Moreover, that excellent meal, composed of delicate and very expensive foods with which I was unacquainted even by name, had strongly disposed my mind to indulgence and good-humour.  But every one was not similarly inclined, for from the other side of the table I could hear the bass voice of M. Barreau, complaining: 

“Why can he not mind his own business?  Do I go pushing my nose into his department?  To begin with, the thing concerns Bompain, not him.  And then, after all, what is it that I am charged with?  The butcher sends me five baskets of meat every morning.  I use only two of them and sell the three others back to him.  Where is the chef who does not do the same?  As if, instead of coming to play the spy in my basement, he would not do better to look after the great leakage up there.  When I think that in three months that gang on the first floor has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs’ worth of cigars.  Twenty-eight thousand francs!  Ask Noel if I am not speaking the truth.  And on the second floor, in the apartments of madame, that is where you should look to see a fine confusion of linen, of dresses thrown aside after being worn once, jewels by the handful, pearls that you crush on the floor as you walk.  Oh, but wait a little.  I shall get my own back from that same little gentleman.”

I understood that the allusion was to M. de Gery, that young secretary of the Nabob who often comes to the Territorial, where he is always occupied rummaging into the books.  Very polite, certainly, but a very haughty young man, who does not know how to push himself forward.  From all round the table there came nothing but a concert of maledictions on him.  M. Louis himself addressed some remarks to the company upon the subject with his grand air: 

“In our establishment, my dear M. Barreau, the cook quite recently had an affair, similar to yours, with the chief of his excellency’s Cabinet, who had permitted himself to make some comments upon the expenditure.  The cook went up to the duke’s apartments upon the instant in his professional costume, and with his hand on the strings of his apron, said, ‘Let your excellency choose between monsieur and myself.’  The duke did not hesitate.  One can find as many Cabinet leaders as one desires, while the good cooks, you can count them.  There are in Paris four altogether.  I include you, my dear Barreau.  We dismissed the chief of our Cabinet, giving him a prefecture of the first class by way of consolation; but we kept the chef of our kitchen.”