All his expenses were regulated with the same skill. He went to one of the first tailors in Paris, but a friend of his who was in the Foreign Office procured for him from London all the suits he wanted between the seasons. When he had a present to make, or any New Year's gifts to buy, he always knew of a cargo of Indian or Chinese things that had just arrived, or he remembered an old piece of Saxony or Sevres china that was lying hidden away in some shop in an unfrequented part of Paris, one of those old curiosities, the price of which cannot be discovered by the person for whom it is destined. All this with Denoisel was spontaneous, natural, and instinctive. This never-ending victory of Parisian intelligence over all the extravagance of life had nothing of the meanness and pettiness of sordid calculation about it. It was the happy discovery of a scheme of existence under satisfactory conditions, and not a series of vulgar petty economies, and in the well-organized expenditure of his six hundred pounds a year the man remained liberal and high-minded: he avoided what was too expensive for him, and never attempted to beat prices down. Denoisel had a flat of his own on the first storey of a well-ordered house with a carpeted staircase. He had only three rooms, but the Boulevard des Italiens was at his very door. His little drawing-room, which he had furnished as a smoking-den, was charming. It was one of those snug little rooms which Parisian upholsterers are so clever in arranging. It was all draped and furnished with chintz, and had divans as wide as beds. It had been Denoisel's own wish that the absence of all objects of art should complete the cheerful look of the room. He was waited on in the morning by his hall-porter, who brought him a cup of chocolate and did all the necessary housework. He dined at a club or restaurant or with friends. The low rent and the simplicity of his household and domestic arrangements left Denoisel more of that money of which wealthy people are so often short, that money for the little luxuries of life, which is more necessary than any other in Paris, and which is known as pocket-money. Occasionally, however, that _force majeure_, the Unforeseen, would suddenly arrive in the midst of this regular existence and disarrange its equilibrium and its budget.