Gaston François Louis Pasbeaucoup had an apron tied about his middle, and, standing before the intended patron's table, leaned what weight he had--it was not much--upon his finger-tips. His mustache was fierce enough to grace the upper lip of a deputy from the Bouches-du-Rhône and generous enough to spare many a contribution to the _plat-du-jour_; but his mustache was the only large thing about him--always excepting Madame his wife, who was ever somewhere about him and who was just now, two hundred and twenty pounds of evidence to the good food of the Deux Colombes, stuffed into a wire cage at one end of the bar, and bulging out of it, her eyebrows meeting over her pug-nose and the heap of hair leaping from her head nearly to the ceiling, while her lips and fingers were busy adding the bills from _déjeuner_. "It would greatly pleasure me to accommodate monsieur," Pasbeaucoup was whispering, "but monsieur must know that already----" The sentence ended in a deprecating glance over the speaker's shoulder in the general direction of mighty Madame. "Already? Already what then?" demanded the intending customer. He was lounging on the wall-seat behind his table, and he had an aristocratic air surprisingly at variance with his garments. His black jacket shone too highly at the elbows, and its short sleeves betrayed an unnecessary length of red wrist. His black boots gasped for repair; a soft black hat, pushed to the back of his black hair, still dripped from an unprotected voyage along the rainy street, and his neckcloth, which was also long and soft and black, showed a spot or two not put there by its makers. These were patently matters beyond their owner's command and beneath the dignity of his attention. Against them one was compelled to set a manner truly lofty, which was enhanced by a pair of burning, deep-placed eyes, a thin white face and, sprouting from either side of his lower jaw, near the chin, two wisps of ebon whisker. He frowned majestically, and he smoked a caporal cigarette as if it were a Havana cigar. "Already what?" he loudly repeated. "If it is possible! I patronize your cabbage of a café for five years, and now you put me off with your alreadys!" Pasbeaucoup, his fingers still resting on the table, danced in embarrassment and rolled his eyes in a manner that plainly enough warned monsieur not to let his voice reach the caged lady. "I was but about to say that monsieur already owes us the trifling sum of----" "_Sixty francs, twenty-five!_" The tone that announced these fateful numerals was so tremendous a contralto as to be really bass. It came from the wire cage and belonged to Madame. Pasbeaucoup sank into the nearest chair. He spread out his hands in a gesture that eloquently said: "Now you've done it! I can't shield you any longer!"