II
I have not yet written a single time the name of my masters. It is a ridiculous and comical name: Lanlaire; Monsieur and Madame Lanlaire. You see at once the plays that can be made on such a name, and the jokes to which it is bound to give rise. As for their Christian names, they are, perhaps, more ridiculous than their surname, and, if I may say so, they complete it. That of Monsieur is Isidore; that of Madame, Euphrasie. Euphrasie! Think of it!
I have just been to the haberdasher's to match some silk. And the woman who keeps the shop has given me some information as to the house. It is not delightful. But, to be just, I must say that I have never met such a chattering jade. If the dealers of whom my masters buy speak in this way of them, what must be said of them by those whom they do not patronize? My! but they have good tongues in the country.
Monsieur's father was a manufacturer of cloths, and a banker, at Louviers. He went into a fraudulent bankruptcy that emptied all the little purses of the region, and was condemned to ten years' imprisonment, which, in view of the forgeries,
