IV

As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which formerly

divided a master draper from his apprentices was that they would have

been more likely to steal a piece of cloth than to infringe this

time-honored etiquette. Such reserve may now appear ridiculous; but

these old houses were a school of honesty and sound morals. The

masters adopted their apprentices. The young man's linen was cared

for, mended, and often replaced by the mistress of the house. If an

apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly maternal attention. In

a case of danger the master lavished his money in calling in the most

celebrated physicians, for he was not answerable to their parents

merely for the good conduct and training of the lads. If one of them,

whose character was unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old

tradesmen knew how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and

they did not hesitate to entrust the happiness of their daughters to

men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. Guillaume was one

of these men of the old school, and if he had their ridiculous side,

he had all their good qualities; and Joseph Lebas, the chief

assistant, an orphan without any fortune, was in his mind destined to

be the husband of Virginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not

share the symmetrical ideas of his master, who would not for an empire

have given his second daughter in marriage before the elder. The

unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given to Mademoiselle

Augustine, the younger. In order to justify this passion, which had

grown up in secret, it is necessary to inquire a little further into

the springs of the absolute government which ruled the old cloth-

merchant's household.

Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the

very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur

Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than

once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her

long, thin face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or

of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head--that

of a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying

shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the

neighborhood she was known as the "portress nun." Her speech was curt,

and her movements had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye,

with a gleam in it like a cat's, seemed to spite the world because she

was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like her younger

sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had reached the age of

eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the graceless effect which her

likeness to her mother sometimes gave to her features, but maternal

austerity had endowed her with two great qualities which made up for

everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who

was but just eighteen, was not like either her father or her mother.

She was one of those daughters whose total absence of any physical

affinity with their parents makes one believe in the adage: "God gives

children." Augustine was little, or, to describe her more truly,

delicately made. Full of gracious candor, a man of the world could

have found no fault in the charming girl beyond a certain meanness of

gesture or vulgarity of attitude, and sometimes a want of ease. Her

silent and placid face was full of the transient melancholy which

comes over all young girls who are too weak to dare to resist their

mother's will.

The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify the innate

vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them

wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and

the shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck

of dust, and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them.

As their style of living compelled them to find the elements of

happiness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto

always satisfied their mother, who secretly prided herself on the

perfect characters of her two daughters. It is easy to imagine the

results of the training they had received. Brought up to a commercial

life, accustomed to hear nothing but dreary arguments and calculations

about trade, having studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, a

little Bible-history, and the history of France in Le Ragois, and

never reading any book but what their mother would sanction, their

ideas had not acquired much scope. They knew perfectly how to keep

house; they were familiar with the prices of things; they understood

the difficulty of amassing money; they were economical, and had a

great respect for the qualities that make a man of business. Although

their father was rich, they were as skilled in darning as in

embroidery; their mother often talked of having them taught to cook,

so that they might know how to order a dinner and scold a cook with

due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures of the world; and,

seeing how their parents spent their exemplary lives, they very rarely

suffered their eyes to wander beyond the walls of their hereditary

home, which to their mother was the whole universe. The meetings to

which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of earthly

joy to them.

When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to be prepared to

receive company--Madame Roguin, a Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months

younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin,

employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich

perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the

richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his father-in-

law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some immaculate

ladies--the arrangements, made necessary by the way in which

everything was packed away--the plate, the Dresden china, the

candlesticks, and the glass--made a variety in the monotonous lives of

the three women, who came and went and exerted themselves as nuns

would to receive their bishop. Then, in the evening, when all three

were tired out with having wiped, rubbed, unpacked, and arranged all

the gauds of the festival, as the girls helped their mother to

undress, Madame Guillaume would say to them, "Children, we have done

nothing today."