"Now, during the dozen days since I again became a citizen of the world, there is one word that I've heard spoken everywhere. At Paris, as well as at Berlin, people no longer speak of anything but millions; there is no longer any talk of anything else, and everybody's mouth is full of millions. From hearing so much said about it, I've acquired a curiosity to know what it is. Go, fetch me out a million, and I'll give you quittance!" If you want to reach an approximate idea of the piercing cries which answered him, go to the _Jardin des Plantes_ at the breakfast hour of the birds of prey, and try to pull the meat out of their beaks. Fougas stopped his ears and remained inexorable. Prayers, arguments, misrepresentations, flatteries, cringings, glanced off from him like rain from a zinc roof. But at ten o'clock at night, when he had concluded that all concurrence was impossible, he took his hat: "Good evening!" said he. "It's no longer a million that I must have, but two millions, and all over. We'll go to law. I'm going to supper." He was on the staircase, when Frau Meiser said to her husband: "Call him back, and give him his million!" "Are you a fool?" "Don't be afraid." "I can never do it!" "Father in heaven! what blockheads men are! Monsieur! Monsieur Fougas! Monsieur Colonel Fougas! Come up again, I pray you! We consent to all that you require!" "Damnation!" said he, on reentering; "you ought to have made up your minds sooner. But after all, let's see the money!" Frau Meiser explained to him with her tenderest voice, that poor capitalists like themselves, were not in the habit of keeping millions under their own lock and key. "But you shall lose nothing by waiting, my sweet sir! To-morrow you shall handle the amount in nice white silver; my husband will sign you a check on the Royal Bank of Dantzic." "But----," said the unfortunate Meiser. He signed, nevertheless, for he had boundless confidence in the practical ingenuity of Catharine. The old lady begged Fougas to sit down at the end of the table, and dictated to him a receipt for two millions, in payment of all demands. You may depend that she did not forgot a word of the legal formulas, and that she arranged the affair in due form according to the Prussian code. The receipt, written throughout in the Colonel's hand, filled three large pages. He signed the instrument with a flourish, and received in exchange the signature of Nicholas, which he knew well. "Well," said he to the old gentleman, "you're certainly not such an Arab as they said you were at Berlin. Shake hands, old scamp! I don't usually shake hands with any but honest people; but on an occasion like this, one can do a little something extra." "Do it double, Monsieur Fougas," said Frau Meiser, humbly. "Will you not join us in this modest supper?"