"These young men are beginning to assume airs that their fathers would never dream of doing. They have lost all sense of discipline, sir. If I had written a letter like that to my chief when I was a lieutenant in the army I should have been put in the cells—put in the cells, sir; do you hear me?—for fourteen days on bread and water, and by God, sir, I should have deserved it. I must see Pierre, and look into this matter. By the way, Villebois, how is the General getting on?"
"Oh, quite as well as can be expected. I sewed the ends of the nerve together some days ago, and he is already out of bed. He should be able to go out soon."
DELAPINE INTERRUPTS A FIGHT
Madame Villebois had been brought up in a small country town, and as her parents had always lacked both the energy and the desire to travel a yard beyond Paris or Berck-sur-Mer, these were the only places outside her home that she had ever visited in her life. Of the rest of France she knew practically nothing, and as for England she only had an idea that it was a country of fogs and shopkeepers, where it was perpetually raining.
Her parents were profoundly ignorant of everything outside their own home-circle, and considered they had carried out their duty to the full by confiding the education of their only child after she left the convent to the tender mercies of the parish priest. This worthy gentleman had a sort of moral Index Purgatorius by which he regulated the conduct and instruction of all the children committed to his care, and, like Pope Paul IV., he not only forbade any thought or action which was forbidden in his index, but even prohibited everything that was not entered there-in as permissible. The result of this training was that Madame Villebois up to the end of her days considered everything absolutely wicked which had not been expressly sanctioned by her ghostly confessor. Still, with all her short-comings, she had a fair share of every-day common-sense, and her knowledge of dress and of cookery went a long way to make up for her dearth of mental qualifications. Dinner at the house of the Villebois was always a function of vast importance in the eyes of madame. The cuisine and wines were certainly above criticism, consequently an invitation to dine "chez les Villebois" was greatly prized by their large circle of friends, and the well-known bonhommie of the good-natured doctor made him an ideal host.
As for madame herself, that worthy dame was absolutely certain that her husband's extensive practice was entirely due to her own smart attire and her unflagging devotion to the culinary art, and from early morn till the afternoon, madame spent the most of her time between bargaining with the tradesmen over the details of purchases for the larder, and superintending the important culinary operations in the kitchen itself.
"A good cook," she used to say, "makes a good wife," and she was firmly convinced that the seat of her husband's affections was located somewhere in that portly and rotund region of his anatomy which was discreetly covered by the lower part of his waistcoat.