What do you think?
Tapotte is not only going to sit for a companion half-length to Madame's portrait, but he has given me a commission for half-a-dozen ancestors.

Fancy--half-a-dozen illustrious dead-and-done Tapottes! What a scope for the imagination! What a bewildering vista of _billets de banque_! I feel--ah, _mon ami_! I feel that the wildest visions of my youth are about to be realized, and that I shall see my tailor's bill receipted before I die!" "I'm delighted," said I, "that Tapotte has turned up a trump card." "A trump card?
Say a California--a Pactolus--a Golden Calf.

Nay, hath not Tapotte two golden calves?
Is he not of the precious metal all compact?
Stands he not, in the amiable ripeness of his years, a living representative of the Golden Age?
_'O bella eta dell' oro_!'" And to my horror, he then and there executed a frantic _pas seul_.
"Gracious powers!" I exclaimed.

"Are you mad ?" "Yes--raving mad.

Have you any objection ?" "But, my dear fellow--in the face of day--in the streets of Paris! We shall get taken up by the police!" "Then suppose we get out of the streets of Paris?
I'm tired enough, Heaven knows, of cultivating the arid soil of the Pave.