"What! have they come? How kind of them!" cried Monsieur Destival, running to the window. Madame Destival did not share her husband's delight; however, she rose to satisfy herself concerning the arrival of her new guests, and went out to receive them; for persons who have a calèche and a livery deserve the very greatest consideration. Thus, Monsieur Destival flew at his wife's heels, leaving Monsieur Monin, who was just about to tell him how many times he had hunted, and who, finding himself abandoned in the salon, turned to his ordinary resource, and succeeded, by dint of perseverance, in forcing two dainty pinches of snuff into his nostrils. Monsieur de la Thomassinière, for whom they ran downstairs so eagerly, was a man of about forty years of age. When he arrived in Paris, at eighteen, his name was Thomas simply, and he did not blush then for his mother, who kept a little wine-shop in her village. But residence in the capital had wrought an entire change in Monsieur Thomas. First a shop clerk, then a government clerk, then a money-lender, then a man of large affairs, Monsieur Thomas had seen Fortune smile constantly upon him. He speculated with his consols and was lucky; after that he forgot his village and adopted the tone and manners of a man in the first society. That a person should start from very low and rise very high--there is no objection to that; on the contrary, the man who wins success by his work, who makes his own fortune, leads us to believe that his merit is greater than his who attains the highest honor without exertion of his own. But the thing for which a parvenu is never forgiven is an affectation of pride and insolence, and the belief that by assuming the airs of a grand seigneur, he can lead people to forget the name and the clothes that he used to wear. Monsieur Thomas was such a one. He began by changing his too vulgar name for that of La Thomassinière. Then, instead of urging his mother to leave her village and enjoy his fortune, he contented himself with sending her a sum of money which would enable her to take down the sign of the _Learned Ass_, and to stop selling wine. But he forbade her to come to Paris, where, he said, the air was very unhealthy for elderly women. Then Monsieur de la Thomassinière set up an establishment,--carriage, servants, livery--bought a magnificent country estate and a very pretty wife of eighteen, who was turned over to him with a dowry of one hundred thousand francs, and who did not so much as ask whether her husband was handsome or ugly, because, having been perfectly educated, she knew that a husband who owns a carriage is always comely enough, and, besides that, a woman is supposed to look at nobody but her husband.