“Do you know that it’s perfectly stunning to see you here?” she said to M. de Tregars. “Just imagine, for a moment, what a face the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight will make when he sees you!”
It was her father whom she called thus, since the day when she had discovered that there was a German coin called thaler, which represents three francs and sixty-eight centimes in French currency.
“You know, I suppose,” she went on, “that papa has just been badly stuck?”
M. de Tregars was excusing himself in vague terms; but it was one of Mlle. Cesarine’s habits never to listen to the answers which were made to her questions.
“Favoral,” she continued, “papa’s cashier, has just started on an international picnic. Did you know him?”
“Very little.”
“An old fellow, always dressed like a country sexton, and with a face like an undertaker. And the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight, an old bird, was fool enough to be taken in by him! For he was taken in. He had a face like a man whose chimney is on fire, when he came to tell us, mamma and myself, that Favoral had gone off with twelve millions.”
“And has he really carried off that enormous sum?”
“Not entire, of course, because it was not since day before yesterday only that he began digging into the Mutual Credit’s pile. There were years that this venerable old swell was leading a somewhat-variegated existence, in company with rather-funny ladies, you know. And as he was not exactly calculated to be adored at par, why, it cost papa’s stockholders a pretty lively premium. But, anyhow, he must have carried off a handsome nugget.”
And, bouncing to the piano, she began an accompaniment loud enough to crack the window-panes, singing at the same time the popular refrain of the “Young Ladies of Pautin”: