Henriette, who was more mistrustful than her husband, hesitated when this list of guests was decided upon.

’Oh!  Fagerolles?  You believe in having Fagerolles with the others?  They hardly like him—­nor Claude either; I fancied I noticed a coolness—­’

But he interrupted her, bent on not admitting it.

’What! a coolness?  It’s really funny, but women can’t understand that fellows chaff each other.  All that doesn’t prevent them from having their hearts in the right place.’

Henriette took especial care in preparing the menu for that Thursday dinner.  She now had quite a little staff to overlook, a cook, a man-servant, and so on; and if she no longer prepared any of the dishes herself, she still saw that very delicate fare was provided, out of affection for her husband, whose sole vice was gluttony.  She went to market with the cook, and called in person on the tradespeople.  She and her husband had a taste for gastronomical curiosities from the four corners of the world.  On this occasion they decided to have some ox-tail soup, grilled mullet, undercut of beef with mushrooms, raviolis in the Italian fashion, hazel-hens from Russia, and a salad of truffles, without counting caviare and kilkis as side-dishes, a glace pralinee, and a little emerald-coloured Hungarian cheese, with fruit and pastry.  As wine, some old Bordeaux claret in decanters, chambertin with the roast, and sparkling moselle at dessert, in lieu of champagne, which was voted commonplace.

At seven o’clock Sandoz and Henriette were waiting for their guests, he simply wearing a jacket, and she looking very elegant in a plain dress of black satin.  People dined at their house in frock-coats, without any fuss.  The drawing-room, the arrangements of which they were now completing, was becoming crowded with old furniture, old tapestry, nick-nacks of all countries and all times—­a rising and now overflowing stream of things which had taken source at Batignolles with an old pot of Rouen ware, which Henriette had given her husband on one of his fete days.  They ran about to the curiosity shops together; a joyful passion for buying possessed them.  Sandoz satisfied the longings of his youth, the romanticist ambitions which the first books he had read had given birth to.  Thus this writer, so fiercely modern, lived amid the worm-eaten middle ages which he had dreamt of when he was a lad of fifteen.  As an excuse, he laughingly declared that handsome modern furniture cost too much, whilst with old things, even common ones, you immediately obtained something with effect and colour.  There was nothing of the collector about him, he was entirely concerned as to decoration and broad effects; and to tell the truth, the drawing-room, lighted by two lamps of old Delft ware, had quite a soft warm tint with the dull gold of the dalmaticas used for upholstering the seats, the yellowish incrustations of the Italian cabinets and Dutch show-cases, the faded hues of the Oriental door-hangings, the hundred little notes of the ivory, crockery and enamel work, pale with age, which showed against the dull red hangings of the room.