The figures were fat and solid. The amount set forth would have maintained an ordinary family of seven or eight, in comfort, for a month. A horrid sensation of bankruptcy overwhelmed me. Then I looked at the grocer's bill. It was four pages long, and the "demnition total" quite appalling. I could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The gentleman who supplied the fish appeared to be equally rapacious. Was it all a hateful conspiracy, a fell plot to effect my ruin, or--or was it French economy? "We have eaten ourselves to the poorhouse, Letitia," I said, with a sinking heart. "I--I can't pay these bills." "Oh, they must be somebody else's bills," murmured Letitia, "they--they can't be ours." "They can't be anybody else's," I protested, in the calmness born of despair. "Nobody could stand them. Rockefeller doesn't live in this neighborhood. Carnegie is miles away. They _might_ be Carnegie's, if he were a neighbor. As it is, my girl, I'm afraid they are ours. Yet how _can_ they be?" "Of course we have lived well," said Letitia reflectively, "we have lived _very_ well. We can't even put it down to waste, because French people never waste." "And yet"--I tried to fathom the mystery--"there has always been three times as much as we could eat. The other night, we had six ptarmigans before us, and we ate one apiece. The inference is, Letitia, either that Madame and Leonie have appetites like cart-horses, or that they throw the things away." "A French cook throws nothing away," persisted Letitia almost defiantly. "That I know." "You had better ask Madame about it," I said doggedly. "Perhaps she can explain." "That is surely your privilege, Archie. You pay the bills; I don't." "Since you have told her that I am just a poor hanger-on, and that you are the money end of the concern, the affair this time, my dear Letitia, is yours." At present, I flattered myself I had scored one. Letitia had painted her position so luminously, and had etched me in in such somber tints, that I felt master of the situation. Perhaps it was cowardly, but as I had the name I might as well have the game. Although I had said little about the contemptuous treatment I had received from Leonie during the past week, I had felt it acutely. Like the Spartan boy, I had suffered in silence. Being American, and not even a little bit Spartan, this had been difficult. Letitia was weeping silently, and I felt like a double-distilled brute. "I hate to talk to an artist in that way," she said sorrowfully. "Her temperament will be shocked. You can well imagine, Archie, that such a woman will simply despise us."