cheapness of much that Anatole Kahn had to offer.
Goundran stood gazing at a flashy brass bed which
possessed a particularly striking mattress — green and
white ticking with a small orange line ; and beside
him, clinging to his arm, stood Elise: 'Ah, que c'est
ravissant!3 she kept saying.
And hearing her, Anatole Kahn stepped forward:
'It is also exceedingly cheap;3 he assured them,
'the best hair and wool, the best lacquered brass.
Then Madame has doubtless remarked the design,
dignity with lightness, quite le dernier chic —such
bedsteads are now all the rage in Paris.3
But Goundran shook his head: cNot to-day, my
friend — even the cheapest article costs money. We
must think it over; is that not so, Elise?' For Goundran
was a thrifty if devoted husband. Yet he thought:
'How much I should like to purchase that bedstead
for the little one3s coming confinement . . .' And he
gently pressed his wife's arm as he whispered: 'Do not
despair, I may buy it for you yet; we will go into our
banking account this evening.3
It was not until late in the afternoon that Jouse
arrived upon the scene, and with him came his wife,
his two sons, and Anfos. Jouse moved with a kind of
majestic precision, squaring his heavy and ageing
shoulders. His chin with its thick curly beard was
thrust out, his eyes and his lips were quietly smiling.
'Let us see what this mountebank has to sell,3 he
remarked to no one in particular as they stopped in
front of Kahn's largest window.
Oh, that plate-glass window of the Gaieties Kahn —
the meanness, the blatant untruthfulness of it! The
drawing room suite a la Louis Qiiinze, thin gilt
already beginning to rub, cherry-coloured, half-
cotton, deceitful satin; the inadequate tables with
spindle legs, and joints that would gape at the least
provocation; the marble-topped, bow-fronted chests
247