“Ah! Celeste, I would I had a kingdom to lay at your feet,” murmured Felix Phellion. The worthy Phellion wiped away a tear. Dutocq himself was moved. “Oh! the charming child!” cried Mademoiselle Thuillier, rising, and going round to kiss her sister-in-law. “My turn now!” said Colleville, posing like an athlete. “Now listen: To friendship! Empty your glasses; refill your glasses. Good! To the fine arts,--the flower of social life! Empty your glasses; refill your glasses. To another such festival on the day after election!” “What is that little bottle you have there?” said Dutocq to Mademoiselle Thuillier. “That,” she said, “is one of my three bottles of Madame Amphoux’ liqueur; the second is for the day of Celeste’s marriage; the third for the day on which her first child is baptized.” “My sister is losing her head,” remarked Thuillier to Colleville. The dinner ended with a toast, offered by Thuillier, but suggested to him by Theodose at the moment when the malaga sparkled in the little glasses like so many rubies. “Colleville, messieurs, has drunk to _friendship_. I now drink, in this most generous wine, To my friends!” An hurrah, full of heartiness, greeted that fine sentiment, but Dutocq remarked aside to Theodose:-- “It is a shame to pour such wine down the throats of such people.” “Ah! if we could only make such wine as that!” cried Zelie, making her glass ring by the way in which she sucked down the Spanish liquid. “What fortunes we could get!” Zelie had now reached her highest point of incandescence, and was really alarming. “Yes,” replied Minard, “but ours is made.” “Don’t you think, sister,” said Brigitte to Madame Thuillier, “that we had better take coffee in the salon?” Madame Thuillier obediently assumed the air of mistress of the house, and rose. “Ah! you are a great wizard,” said Flavie Colleville, accepting la Peyrade’s arm to return to the salon. “And yet I care only to bewitch you,” he answered. “I think you more enchanting than ever this evening.” “Thuillier,” she said, to evade the subject, “Thuillier made to think himself a political character! oh! oh!”