V

When, on very great occasions, "the portress nun" allowed dancing,

restricting the games of boston, whist, and backgammon within the

limits of her bedroom, such a concession was accounted as the most

unhoped felicity, and made them happier than going to the great balls,

to two or three of which Guillaume would take the girls at the time of

the Carnival.

And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertainment, when he

spared no expense. However rich and fashionable the persons invited

might be, they were careful not to be absent; for the most important

houses on the exchange had recourse to the immense credit, the

fortune, or the time-honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still,

the excellent merchant's daughters did not benefit as much as might be

supposed by the lessons the world has to offer to young spirits. At

these parties, which were indeed set down in the ledger to the credit

of the house, they wore dresses the shabbiness of which made them

blush. Their style of dancing was not in any way remarkable, and their

mother's surveillance did not allow of their holding any conversation

with their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the law of the old sign

of the Cat and Racket commanded that they should be home by eleven

o'clock, the hour when balls and fetes begin to be lively. Thus their

pleasures, which seemed to conform very fairly to their father's

position, were often made insipid by circumstances which were part of

the family habits and principles.

As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame

Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the

morning, to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered

their employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had

been gifted by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness

of such a life. Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to

pierce the depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms.

After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be

listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion,

which accounts feelings as of higher value than things. And at such

moments her cheek would flush, her idle hands would lay the muslin

sewing on the polished oak counter, and presently her mother would say

in a voice, of which even the softest tones were sour, "Augustine, my

treasure, what are you thinking about?" It is possible that two

romances discovered by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame

Guillaume had lately discharged--/Hippolyte Comte de Douglas/ and /Le

Comte de Comminges/--may have contributed to develop the ideas of the

young girl, who had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of

the past winter.

And so Augustine's expression of vague longing, her gentle voice, her

jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor Lebas' soul a

flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an easily understood caprice,

Augustine felt no affection for the orphan; perhaps she did not know

that he loved her. On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his

long legs, his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had

found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her

dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. Nothing could be

more natural than these two passions at cross-purposes, born in the

silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood.

The mute and constant looks which made the young people's eyes meet by

sheer need of change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered

peace, was sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love.

The habit of seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our

reading there the qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its

defects.

"At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on

their knees to a suitor!" said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he

read the first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the

conscript classes.

From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter

fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much

the same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good

bit of business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred

debt by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received

from his predecessor under similar conditions! Joseph Lebas, who was

now three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle which a difference of

fifteen years placed between Augustine and himself. Being also too

clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur Guillaume's purpose, he knew

his inexorable principles well enough to feel sure that the second

would never marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose

heart was as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered

in silence.

This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the

heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La

Trappe. But to give a full account of events as well as of feelings,

it is needful to go back to some months before the scene with which

this story opens. At dusk one evening, a young man passing the

darkened shop of the Cat and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze

at a picture which might have arrested every painter in the world. The

shop was not yet lighted, and was as a dark cave beyond which the

dining-room was visible. A hanging lamp shed the yellow light which

lends such charm to pictures of the Dutch school. The white linen, the

silver, the cut glass, were brilliant accessories, and made more

picturesque by strong contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the

head of the family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and the

pure form of Augustine, near whom a fat chubby-cheeked maid was

standing, composed so strange a group; the heads were so singular, and

every face had so candid an expression; it was so easy to read the

peace, the silence, the modest way of life in this family, that to an

artist accustomed to render nature, there was something hopeless in

any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by chance. The stranger

was a young painter, who, seven years before, had gained the first

prize for painting. He had now just come back from Rome. His soul,

full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael and Michael

Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the pompous

land where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or

wrong, this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been a

prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest and

meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only in

painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the

living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound

admiration for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive,

and did not eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on

her face, and her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw

up the shape of her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural

effect. The artist involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel

dreaming of heaven. An almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love

flooded his heart. After remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight

of his ideas, he tore himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing,

and could not sleep.