The animal uttered a cry during the transit, but, arriving at its destination, it crouched behind the cushions, and, stupefied at such unusual treatment, remained silent and motionless.
"Do you know, sir," asked the baroness, "that you are improving? Generally you are only rude, but to-night you are brutal."
"It is because I am in a worse humor than usual," replied Danglars. Hermine looked at the banker with supreme disdain. These glances frequently exasperated the pride of Danglars, but this evening he took no notice of them.
"And what have I to do with your ill-humor?" said the baroness, irritated at the impassability of her husband; "do these things concern me? Keep your ill-humor at the office in your desk; or, since you have clerks whom you pay, vent it upon them."
"Not so," replied Danglars; "your advice is wrong, so I shall not follow it. My desk is my Pactolus, as, I think, M. Demoustier says, and I will not retard its course or disturb its calm. My clerks are honest men, who earn my fortune, whom I pay much below their deserts, if I may value them according to what they bring in; there fore I shall not get into a passion with them; those with whom I will be in a passion are those who eat my dinners, mount my horses, and exhaust my fortune."
"And pray, who are the persons who exhaust your fortune I Explain yourself more clearly, I beg, sir."
"Oh, make yourself easy! I am not speaking riddles, and you will soon know what I mean. The people who exhaust my fortune are those who draw out seven hundred thousand francs in the course of an hour."
"I do not understand you, sir," said the baroness, trying to disguise the agitation of her voice and the flush of her face.
"You understand me perfectly, on the contrary," said Danglars; "but, if you will persist, I will tell you that I have just lost seven hundred thousand francs upon the Spanish loan."
"And pray," asked the baroness, "am I responsible for this loss?"
"Why not?"
"Is it my fault you have lost seven hundred thousand francs?"
"Certainly it is not mine."
"Once for all, sir," replied the baroness, sharply, "I tell you I will not hear cash named; it is a style of language I never heard in the house of my parents or in that of my first husband."
"Oh! I can well believe that, for neither of them was worth a penny.*
"The better reason for my not being conversant with the slang of the bank, which is here dinning in my ears, from morning to night; that noise of crowns jingling, which are constantly being counted and
