Madame Chanteau, who was a very small eater, looked at him compassionately. 'My poor dear,' she said, suddenly, 'you quite distress me. I have brought a little present with me; I meant it for to-morrow, but as there seems to be a famine this evening----' She had opened her bag as she spoke and drew out of it a pan of _foie gras_. Chanteau's eyes flashed brightly. _Foie gras!_ Ah, it was forbidden fruit! A luxury which he adored, but which his doctor had absolutely forbidden him to touch. 'You know,' continued his wife, 'you must have only a very little. Don't be foolish, now, or you shall never have any more.' Chanteau had caught hold of the pan, and he began to open it with trembling hands. There were frequently tremendous struggles between his greediness and his fear of gout; and almost invariably it was his greediness that got the upper hand. Never mind! it was too good to resist, and he would put up with the pain that would follow. Véronique, who had watched him helping himself to a thick slice, took herself off to the kitchen, grumbling as she went: 'Well, well! how he will bellow to-morrow!' The word 'bellow' was habitually on her tongue, and her master and mistress had grown quite used and reconciled to it, so naturally and simply did it come from her lips. When the master had an attack of gout he bellowed, according to Véronique, and she was never scolded for her want of respect in saying so. The dinner ended very merrily. Lazare jokingly dispossessed his father of the _foie gras_. When the cheese and biscuits were put upon the table, Matthew's sudden appearance caused a boisterous commotion. Until then he had been lying asleep under the table. But the arrival of the biscuits had awakened him. He seemed to have scented them in his sleep. Every evening, just at this stage of the meal, it was his custom to get up and shake himself and make the round of the table, questioning the faces of the diners to see if they were charitably disposed. Usually it was Lazare who first took pity upon him, but that evening Matthew, on his second circuit of the table, halted by Pauline's side and gazed up at her earnestly with his honest human-like eyes; and then, divining in her a friend both of man and beast, he laid his huge head on her little knee, without dropping his glance of mild supplication. 'Oh, what a shameful beggar you are!' said Madame Chanteau. 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Matthew, to be so greedy?'