After supper he drank a couple of glasses of champagne--not a bad recipe for cheerfulness, as every one knows.

The champagne inclined him to various adventures; and he determined not to return home, but to go and see a certain well-known lady of German extraction, Karolina Ivanovna, a lady, it appears, with whom he was on a very friendly footing.
It must be mentioned that the prominent personage was no longer a young man, but a good husband and respected father of a family.

Two sons, one of whom was already in the service, and a good-looking, sixteen-year-old daughter, with a rather retrousse but pretty little nose, came every morning to kiss his hand and say, "Bonjour, papa." His wife, a still fresh and good-looking woman, first gave him her hand to kiss, and then, reversing the procedure, kissed his.

But the prominent personage, though perfectly satisfied in his domestic relations, considered it stylish to have a friend in another quarter of the city.

This friend was scarcely prettier or younger than his wife; but there are such puzzles in the world, and it is not our place to judge them.