He no longer thought of expense; he would have thrown his last fifty francs out of the drawing-room windows in order to celebrate that glorious day.
"Listen," he said to his wife; "you must invite Sicardot: he has annoyed me with that rosette of his for a long time! Then Granoux and Roudier; I shouldn't be at all sorry to make them feel that it isn't their purses that will ever win them the cross.

Vuillet is a skinflint, but the triumph ought to be complete: invite him as well as the small fry.

I was forgetting; you must go and call on the marquis in person; we will seat him on your right; he'll look very well at our table.

You know that Monsieur Garconnet is entertaining the colonel and the prefect.

That is to make me understand that I am nobody now.