"Dieu! how good this is! What a fine _fricot_! I ain't never ate anything as tasted like this! I say, Thomas, my boy, we don't make such good fricassees to our little cabaret at the sign of the Learned Ass! Do you remember, boy?" "Who wants some truffles? who hasn't any truffles?" cried Monsieur de la Thomassinière, trying to drown his mother's voice. But Madame Destival, who had heard every word, inquired: "What do you say, madame? Did Monsieur de la Thomassinière ever keep a cabaret?" "La Thomassinière!" echoed Mère Thomas, emptying her glass. "Who's that, my heart?" "Your son, madame." "What! don't you call yourself Thomas no more, my son? So that's what all them green monkeys stitched with gold, in your outside room, meant when they said this wa'n't where you lived! What have you dropped your father's name for, Thomas? Didn't it sound good enough for you? Let me tell you he was an honest man, who sold wine for six sous a litre without putting any drugs in it, like your swindlers in Paris!--Excuse me, friends." "Monsieur your son calls himself La Thomassinière now," said the marquis, "from the name of an estate that he has bought. That is the custom in Paris; he hasn't changed his name but he has lengthened it a little; it's pleasanter to the ear." "Yes, to be sure," said La Thomassinière, trying to recover his self-assurance. "When one has made a fortune as _consequential_ as mine, one is at liberty to forget. Besides, as monsieur le marquis says, it's done every day." "Oh! that makes a difference," rejoined Mère Thomas, "if you've been a-buying estates. That's worse than the Marquis de Carabas. But for all that, my boy, you'd ought to sent for me to come to see you sooner; for I've been just a little bit homesick down to our place; it's a regular hole, and I couldn't have such a devil of a spree with the two hundred francs you send me every year." "Mon Dieu! how outrageous!" cried a lady wearing a cap adorned by a bird-of-paradise, pushing her chair away from the table; while the gentlemen glanced at one another, laughing, and Monsieur de la Thomassinière stretched his feet under the table trying to find those of his excellent mother, who sat opposite him, and to whom he vainly made signals to urge her to be quiet. "What struck that party?" said Mère Thomas, staring at the lady in the cap. "Is she going to faint too? What's she making faces at me for, with that tail of a kite on her head?" "Mother, I implore you!" said La Thomassinière, moving his feet frantically. "Down! down, I say! there's dogs under the table, boy. Here's two or three on 'em running atween my legs. Tell someone to give 'em something to eat, so they'll leave us alone. Give me a drink! Who's going to fill my glass? you, old boy?" It was the marquis to whom this question was addressed; he took a decanter of madeira that stood before him and filled the glass of his neighbor, who always refused to drink without touching glasses.