Müller bowed majestically. "Madame," he said, "I wish to see Monsieur le propriétaire." The dame de comptoir looked very uneasy. "If Monsieur has any complaint to make," she said, "he can make it to me." "Madame, I have none." "Or if it has reference to the ordering of a dinner...." Müller smiled loftily. "Dinner, Madame," he said, with a disdainful gesture, "is but one of the accidents common to humanity. A trifle! A trifle always humiliating--sometimes inconvenient--occasionally impossible. No, Madame, mine is a serious mission; a mission of the highest importance, both socially and commercially. May I beg that you will have the goodness to place my card in the hands of Monsieur le propriétaire, and say that I request the honor of five minutes' interview." The little woman's eyes had all this time been getting rounder and blacker. She was evidently confounded by my friend's grandiloquence. "_Ah! mon Dieu! M'sieur_," she said, nervously, "my husband is in the kitchen. It is a busy day with us, you understand--but I will send for him." And she forthwith despatched a waiter for "Monsieur Choucru." Müller seized me by the arm. "Heavens!" he exclaimed, in a very audible aside, "did you hear? She is his wife! She is Madame Choucru?" "Well, and what of that?" "What of that, indeed? _Mais, mon ami_, how can you ask the question? Have you no eyes? Look at her! Such a remarkably handsome woman--such a _tournure_--such eyes--such a figure for an illustration! Only conceive the effect of Madame Choucru--in medallion!" "Oh, magnificent!" I replied. "Magnificent--in medallion." But I could not, for the life of me, imagine what he was driving at. "And it would make the fortune of the _Toison d'Or_" he added, solemnly. To which I replied that it would undoubtedly do so. Monsieur Choucru now came upon the scene; a short, rosy, round-faced little man in a white flat cap and bibbed apron--like an elderly cherub that had taken to cookery. He hung back upon the threshold, wiping his forehead, and evidently unwilling to show himself in his shirt-sleeves. "Here, _mon bon_," cried Madame, who was by this time crimson with gratified vanity, and in a fever of curiosity; "this way--the gentleman is waiting to speak to you!" Monsieur, the cook and proprietor, shuffled his feet to and fro in the doorway, but came no nearer. "_Parbleu_!" he said, "if M'sieur's business is not urgent." "It is extremely urgent, Monsieur Choucru," replied Müller; "and, moreover, it is not so much my business as it is yours," "Ah bah! if it is my business, then, it may stand over till to-morrow," replied the little man, impatiently. "To-day I have eighty dinners on hand, and with M'sieur's permission".... But Müller strode to the door and caught him by the shoulder.