The clerk goes out.
LUCIE. Perhaps it’s not worth attention.
BRIGNAC. It needs an acknowledgment anyway; and the terms used in the original must be most carefully reproduced in the acknowledgment.
LUCIE. Now tell me how the luncheon went off.
BRIGNAC. I have told you. It went off very well. Too well. The mayor wanted to be even with us. All the same, our dinner to-night will be better. [He takes a cigar out of his pocket] I brought away a cigar to show it to you. Are ours as big?
LUCIE. Pretty much the same.
BRIGNAC. He doesn’t give you cigars like that at his big receptions. There’s the menu.
LUCIE [glancing at it] Oh! I say!
BRIGNAC. The champagne was decanted!