The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is. “That’s enough for the father-in-law!” said the old man. “Talk business; I want a bottle of the best.” So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand on the old table at which he was seated,--which, with its coating of grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came out of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal. “You are always rough to my poor father,” she said to her husband, “and yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by it honestly. Let me see that,” she added, springing at the coin and snatching it from Fourchon’s fingers. “Marie,” said Tonsard, gravely, “above the board you’ll find some bottled wine. Go and get a bottle.” Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine. “Where did you get this, papa” demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin into her pocket. “Philippine! you’ll come to a bad end,” said the old man, shaking his head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible son-in-law, and himself. “Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me,” he added, in a peevish tone. “But it shall be the last. I shall give my custom to the Cafe de la Paix.” “Hold your tongue, papa!” remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore some resemblance to a Roman matron. “You need a shirt, and a pair of clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat. That’s what I take the money for.” “I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me,” said the old man. “People would think me rich and stop giving me anything.” The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man, who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be. “Then you don’t want to tell where you filched that money?” said Tonsard. “We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of us.” He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper happened to glance at his father-in-law’s trousers, and there he spied a raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece. “Having become a capitalist I drink your health,” said Pere Fourchon.