At the Sign of the Cat and Racket — Section 2

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.

The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had, in a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he should possess a faithful portrait of his idol.

He went many times past the house of the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, under a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching creature that Madame Guillaume covered with her wing.

For eight whole months, devoted to his love and to his brush, he was lost to the sight of his most intimate friends forgetting the world, the theatre, poetry, music, and all his dearest habits.

One morning Girodet broke through all the barriers with which artists are familiar, and which they know how to evade, went into his room, and woke him by asking, “What are you going to send to the Salon?

” The artist grasped his friend’s hand, dragged him off to the studio, uncovered a small easel picture and a portrait.

After a long and eager study of the two masterpieces, Girodet threw himself on his comrade’s neck and hugged him, without speaking a word.

His feelings could only be expressed as he felt them--soul to soul.

“You are in love?

” said Girodet.

They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic sentiments by which, indeed, under various conditions, every masterpiece is engendered.

The artist only bent his head in reply.

“How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back from Italy!

But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the Salon,” the great painter went on.

“You see, these two works will not be appreciated.

Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths.

The pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens.

We should do better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets!

There is more glory to be looked for there than from our luckless canvases!

” Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were exhibited.

The _Interior_ made a revolution in painting.

It gave birth to the pictures of genre which pour into all our exhibitions in such prodigious quantity that they might be supposed to be produced by machinery.

As to the portrait, few artists have forgotten that lifelike work; and the public, which as a body is sometimes discerning, awarded it the crown which Girodet himself had hung over it.

The two pictures were surrounded by a vast throng.

They fought for places, as women say.

Speculators and moneyed men would have covered the canvas with double napoleons, but the artist obstinately refused to sell or to make replicas.

An enormous sum was offered him for the right of engraving them, and the print-sellers were not more favored than the amateurs.

Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not of a nature to penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude in the Rue Saint-Denis.

However, when paying a visit to Madame Guillaume, the notary’s wife spoke of the exhibition before Augustine, of whom she was very fond, and explained its purpose.

Madame Roguin’s gossip naturally inspired Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with courage enough to ask her cousin secretly to take her to the Louvre.

Her cousin succeeded in the negotiations she opened with Madame Guillaume for permission to release the young girl for two hours from her dull labors.

Augustine was thus able to make her way through the crowd to see the crowned work.

A

fit of trembling shook her like an aspen leaf as she recognized herself.

She was terrified, and looked about her to find Madame Roguin, from whom she had been separated by a tide of people.

At that moment her frightened eyes fell on the impassioned face of the young painter.

She at once recalled the figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, she had frequently observed, believing him to be a new neighbor.

“You see how love has inspired me,” said the artist in the timid creature’s ear, and she stood in dismay at the words.

She found supernatural courage to enable her to push through the crowd and join her cousin, who was still struggling with the mass of people that hindered her from getting to the picture.

“You will be stifled!

” cried Augustine.

“Let us go.

” But there are moments, at the Salon, when two women are not always free to direct their steps through the galleries.

By the irregular course to which they were compelled by the press, Mademoiselle Guillaume and her cousin were pushed to within a few steps of the second picture.

Chance thus brought them, both together, to where they could easily see the canvas made famous by fashion, for once in agreement with talent.

Madame Roguin’s exclamation of surprise was lost in the hubbub and buzz of the crowd; Augustine involuntarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful study.

Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her finger on her lips, as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic face of the young painter.

The stranger replied by a nod, and pointed to Madame Roguin, as a spoil-sport, to show Augustine that he had understood.

This pantomime struck the young girl like hot coals on her flesh; she felt quite guilty as she perceived that there was a compact between herself and the artist.

The suffocating heat, the dazzling sight of beautiful dresses, the bewilderment produced in Augustine’s brain by the truth of coloring, the multitude of living or painted figures, the profusion of gilt frames, gave her a sense of intoxication which doubled her alarms.

She would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up in her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of sensations.

She nevertheless believed herself to be under the power of the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been warned of by the thundering words of preachers.

This moment was to her like a moment of madness.

She found herself accompanied to her cousin’s carriage by the young man, radiant with joy and love.

Augustine, a prey to an agitation new to her experience, an intoxication which seemed to abandon her to nature, listened to the eloquent voice of her heart, and looked again and again at the young painter, betraying the emotion that came over her.

Never had the bright rose of her cheeks shown in stronger contrast with the whiteness of her skin.

The artist saw her beauty in all its bloom, her maiden modesty in all its glory.

She herself felt a sort of rapture mingled with terror at thinking that her presence had brought happiness to him whose name was on every lip, and whose talent lent immortality to transient scenes.

She was loved!

It was impossible to doubt it.

When she no longer saw the artist, these simple words still echoed in her ear, “You see how love has inspired me!

” And the throbs of her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed a pain, her heated blood revealed so many unknown forces in her being.

She affected a severe headache to avoid replying to her cousin’s questions concerning the pictures; but on their return Madame Roguin could not forbear from speaking to Madame Guillaume of the fame that had fallen on the house of the Cat and Racket, and Augustine quaked in every limb as she heard her mother say that she should go to the Salon to see her house there.

The young girl again declared herself suffering, and obtained leave to go to bed.

“That is what comes of sight-seeing,” exclaimed Monsieur Guillaume--“a headache.

And is it so very amusing to see in a picture what you can see any day in your own street?

Don’t talk to me of your artists!

Like writers, they are a starveling crew.

Why the devil need they choose my house to flout it in their pictures?

” “It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth,” said Joseph Lebas.

This remark did not protect art and thought from being condemned once again before the judgment-seat of trade.

As may be supposed, these speeches did not infuse much hope into Augustine, who, during the night, gave herself up to the first meditations of love.

The events of the day were like a dream, which it was a joy to recall to her mind.

She was initiated into the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all the ebb and flow of feeling which could not fail to toss a heart so simple and timid as hers.

What a void she perceived in this gloomy house!

What a treasure she found in her soul!

To be the wife of a genius, to share his glory!

What ravages must such a vision make in the heart of a girl brought up among such a family!

What hopes must it raise in a young creature who, in the midst of sordid elements, had pined for a life of elegance!

A

sunbeam had fallen into the prison.

Augustine was suddenly in love.

So many of her feelings were soothed that she succumbed without reflection.

At eighteen does not love hold a prism between the world and the eyes of a young girl?

She was incapable of suspecting the hard facts which result from the union of a loving woman with a man of imagination, and she believed herself called to make him happy, not seeing any disparity between herself and him.

To her the future would be as the present.

When, next day, her father and mother returned from the Salon, their dejected faces proclaimed some disappointment.

In the first place, the painter had removed the two pictures; and then Madame Guillaume had lost her cashmere shawl.

But the news that the pictures had disappeared from the walls since her visit revealed to Augustine a delicacy of sentiment which a woman can always appreciate, even by instinct.

On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, Theodore de Sommervieux--for this was the name which fame had stamped on Augustine’s heart--had been squirted on by the apprentices while awaiting the appearance of his artless little friend, who certainly did not know that he was there, the lovers had seen each other for the fourth time only since their meeting at the Salon.

The difficulties which the rule of the house placed in the way of the painter’s ardent nature gave added violence to his passion for Augustine.

How could he get near to a young girl seated in a counting-house between two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie and Madame Guillaume?

How could he correspond with her when her mother never left her side?

Ingenious, as lovers are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in one of the assistants, to whose interests he supposed the others to be devoted.

If he should evade these sons of Argus, he would yet be wrecked under the stern eye of the old draper or of Madame Guillaume.

The very vehemence of his passion hindered the young painter from hitting on the ingenious expedients which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the last effort of intelligence spurred by a wild craving for liberty, or by the fire of love.

Theodore wandered about the neighborhood with the restlessness of a madman, as though movement might inspire him with some device.

After racking his imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blowsy waiting-maid with gold.

Thus a few notes were exchanged at long intervals during the fortnight following the ill-starred morning when Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so scrutinized one another.

At the present moment the young couple had agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the day, and on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during Mass and vespers.

Augustine had sent her dear Theodore a list of the relations and friends of the family, to whom the young painter tried to get access, in the hope of interesting, if it were possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite monstrous speculation, a thing unheard-of.

Nothing meanwhile, was altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket.

If Augustine was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic code, she stole up to her room to make signals by means of a jar of flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one observed it, not even her mother.

This will cause some surprise to those who have entered into the spirit of the household, where an idea tainted with poetry would be in startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and analyzed.

Nothing, however, could be more natural: the quiet barque that navigated the stormy waters of the Paris Exchange, under the flag of the Cat and Racket, was just now in the toils of one of these tempests which, returning periodically, might be termed equinoctial.

For the last fortnight the five men forming the crew, with Madame Guillaume and Mademoiselle Virginie, had been devoting themselves to the hard labor, known as stock-taking.

Every bale was turned over, and the length verified to ascertain the exact value of the remnant.

The ticket attached to each parcel was carefully examined to see at what time the piece had been bought.

The retail price was fixed.

Monsieur Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen behind his ear, was like a captain commanding the working of the ship.

His sharp tones, spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into the depths of the hold in the cellar-store, gave utterance to the barbarous formulas of trade-jargon, which find expression only in cipher.

“How much H. N.

Z.?

”--“All sold.

”--“What is left of Q. X.?

”--“Two ells.

”--“At what price?

”--“Fifty-five three.

”--“Set down A. at three, with all of J.

J.

, all of M. P.

, and what is left of V. D. O.

”--A hundred other injunctions equally intelligible were spouted over the counters like verses of modern poetry, quoted by romantic spirits, to excite each other’s enthusiasm for one of their poets.

In the evening Guillaume, shut up with his assistant and his wife, balanced his accounts, carried on the balance, wrote to debtors in arrears, and made out bills.

All three were busy over this enormous labor, of which the result could be stated on a sheet of foolscap, proving to the head of the house that there was so much to the good in hard cash, so much in goods, so much in bills and notes; that he did not owe a sou; that a hundred or two hundred thousand francs were owing to him; that the capital had been increased; that the farmlands, the houses, or the investments were extended, or repaired, or doubled.

Whence it became necessary to begin again with increased ardor, to accumulate more crown-pieces, without its ever entering the brain of these laborious ants to ask--“To what end?

” Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine escaped the investigations of her Argus-eyed relations.

At last, one Saturday evening, the stock-taking was finished.

The figures of the sum-total showed a row of 0’s long enough to allow Guillaume for once to relax the stern rule as to dessert which reigned throughout the year.

The shrewd old draper rubbed his hands, and allowed his assistants to remain at table.

The members of the crew had hardly swallowed their thimbleful of some home-made liqueur, when the rumble of a carriage was heard.

The family party were going to see _Cendrillon_ at the Varietes, while the two younger apprentices each received a crown of six francs, with permission to go wherever they chose, provided they were in by midnight.

Notwithstanding this debauch, the old cloth-merchant was shaving himself at six next morning, put on his maroon-colored coat, of which the glowing lights afforded him perennial enjoyment, fastened a pair of gold buckles on the knee-straps of his ample satin breeches; and then, at about seven o’clock, while all were still sleeping in the house, he made his way to the little office adjoining the shop on the first floor.

Daylight came in through a window, fortified by iron bars, and looking out on a small yard surrounded by such black walls that it was very like a well.

The old merchant opened the iron-lined shutters, which were so familiar to him, and threw up the lower half of the sash window.

The icy air of the courtyard came in to cool the hot atmosphere of the little room, full of the odor peculiar to offices.

The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on the greasy arm of a large cane chair lined with morocco, of which the original hue had disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as to seating himself.

He looked with affection at the double desk, where his wife’s seat, opposite his own, was fitted into a little niche in the wall.

He contemplated the numbered boxes, the files, the implements, the cash box--objects all of immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the room with the shade of Master Chevrel.

He even pulled out the high stool on which he had once sat in the presence of his departed master.

This stool, covered with black leather, the horse-hair showing at every corner--as it had long done, without, however, coming out--he placed with a shaking hand on the very spot where his predecessor had put it, and then, with an emotion difficult to describe, he pulled a bell, which rang at the head of Joseph Lebas’ bed.

When this decisive blow had been struck, the old man, for whom, no doubt, these reminiscences were too much, took up three or four bills of exchange, and looked at them without seeing them.

Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him.

“Sit down there,” said Guillaume, pointing to the stool.

As the old master draper had never yet bid his assistant be seated in his presence, Joseph Lebas was startled.

“What do you think of these notes?

” asked Guillaume.

“They will never be paid.

” “Why?

” “Well, I heard the day before yesterday Etienne and Co. had made their payments in gold.

” “Oh, oh!

” said the draper.

“Well, one must be very ill to show one’s bile.

Let us speak of something else.

--Joseph, the stock-taking is done.

” “Yes, monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you have ever made.

” “Do not use new-fangled words.

Say the profits, Joseph.

Do you know, my boy, that this result is partly owing to you?

And I do not intend to pay you a salary any longer.

Madame Guillaume has suggested to me to take you into partnership.

--‘Guillaume and Lebas;’ will not that make a good business name?

We might add, ‘and Co. ’ to round off the firm’s signature.

” Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide them.

“Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such kindness?

I only do my duty.

It was so much already that you should take an interest in a poor orph----” He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right hand, and dared not look at the old man, who smiled as he thought that this modest young fellow no doubt needed, as he had needed once on a time, some encouragement to complete his explanation.

“To be sure,” said Virginie’s father, “you do not altogether deserve this favor, Joseph.

You have not so much confidence in me as I have in you.

” (The young man looked up quickly.

) “You know all the secrets of the cash-box.

For the last two years I have told you almost all my concerns.

I have sent you to travel in our goods.

In short, I have nothing on my conscience as regards you.

But you--you have a soft place, and you have never breathed a word of it.

” Joseph Lebas blushed.

“Ah, ha!

” cried Guillaume, “so you thought you could deceive an old fox like me?

When you knew that I had scented the Lecocq bankruptcy?

” “What, monsieur?

” replied Joseph Lebas, looking at his master as keenly as his master looked at him, “you knew that I was in love?

” “I know everything, you rascal,” said the worthy and cunning old merchant, pulling the assistant’s ear.

“And I forgive you--I did the same myself.

” “And you will give her to me?

” “Yes--with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you as much by will, and we will start on our new career under the name of a new firm.

We will do good business yet, my boy!

” added the old man, getting up and flourishing his arms.

“I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like trade.

Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it are simpletons.

To be on the scent of a good bargain, to hold your own on ‘Change, to watch as anxiously as at the gaming-table whether Etienne and Co. will fail or no, to see a regiment of Guards march past all dressed in your cloth, to trip your neighbor up--honestly of course!

--to make the goods cheaper than others can; then to carry out an undertaking which you have planned, which begins, grows, totters, and succeeds!

to know the workings of every house of business as well as a minister of police, so as never to make a mistake; to hold up your head in the midst of wrecks, to have friends by correspondence in every manufacturing town; is not that a perpetual game, Joseph?

That is life, that is!

I shall die in that harness, like old Chevrel, but taking it easy now, all the same.

” In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely looked at his assistant, who was weeping copiously.

“Why, Joseph, my poor boy, what is the matter?

” “Oh, I love her so!

Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails me; I believe----” “Well, well, boy,” said the old man, touched, “you are happier than you know, by God!

For she loves you.

I know it.

” And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the young man.

“Mademoiselle Augustine!

Mademoiselle Augustine!

” exclaimed Joseph Lebas in his rapture.

He was about to rush out of the room when he felt himself clutched by a hand of iron, and his astonished master spun him round in front of him once more.

“What has Augustine to do with this matter?

” he asked, in a voice which instantly froze the luckless Joseph.

“Is it not she that--that--I love?

” stammered the assistant.

Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guillaume sat down again, and rested his long head in his hands to consider the perplexing situation in which he found himself.

Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in despair, remained standing.

“Joseph,” the draper said with frigid dignity, “I was speaking of Virginie.

Love cannot be made to order, I know.

I know, too, that you can be trusted.

We will forget all this.

I will not let Augustine marry before Virginie.

--Your interest will be ten per cent.

” The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power of courage and eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his turn--spoke for a quarter of an hour, with so much warmth and feeling, that he altered the situation.

If the question had been a matter of business the old tradesman would have had fixed principles to guide his decision; but, tossed a thousand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment, without a compass, he floated, as he told himself, undecided in the face of such an unexpected event.

Carried away by his fatherly kindness, he began to beat about the bush.

“Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are ten years between my two children.

Mademoiselle Chevrel was no beauty, still she has had nothing to complain of in me.

Do as I did.

Come, come, don’t cry.

Can you be so silly?

What is to be done?

It can be managed perhaps.

There is always some way out of a scrape.

And we men are not always devoted Celadons to our wives--you understand?

Madame Guillaume is very pious.

Come.

By Gad, boy, give your arm to Augustine this morning as we go to Mass.

” These were the phrases spoken at random by the old draper, and their conclusion made the lover happy.

He was already thinking of a friend of his as a match for Mademoiselle Virginie, as he went out of the smoky office, pressing his future father-in-law’s hand, after saying with a knowing look that all would turn out for the best.

“What will Madame Guillaume say to it?

” was the idea that greatly troubled the worthy merchant when he found himself alone.

At breakfast Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom the draper had not yet confided his disappointment, cast meaning glances at Joseph Lebas, who was extremely embarrassed.

The young assistant’s bashfulness commended him to his mother-in-law’s good graces.

The matron became so cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and allowed herself some little pleasantries of time-honored acceptance in such simple families.

She wondered whether Joseph or Virginie were the taller, to ask them to compare their height.

This preliminary fooling brought a cloud to the master’s brow, and he even made such a point of decorum that he desired Augustine to take the assistant’s arm on their way to Saint-Leu.

Madame Guillaume, surprised at this manly delicacy, honored her husband with a nod of approval.

So the procession left the house in such order as to suggest no suspicious meaning to the neighbors.

“Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine,” said the assistant, and he trembled, “that the wife of a merchant whose credit is as good as Monsieur Guillaume’s, for instance, might enjoy herself a little more than Madame your mother does?

Might wear diamonds--or keep a carriage?

For my part, if I were to marry, I should be glad to take all the work, and see my wife happy.

I would not put her into the counting-house.

In the drapery business, you see, a woman is not so necessary now as formerly.

Monsieur Guillaume was quite right to act as he did--and besides, his wife liked it.

But so long as a woman knows how to turn her hand to the book-keeping, the correspondence, the retail business, the orders, and her housekeeping, so as not to sit idle, that is enough.

At seven o’clock, when the shop is shut, I shall take my pleasures, go to the play, and into company.

--But you are not listening to me.

” “Yes, indeed, Monsieur Joseph.

What do you think of painting?

That is a fine calling.

” “Yes.

I know a master house-painter, Monsieur Lourdois.

He is well-to-do.

” Thus conversing, the family reached the Church of Saint-Leu.

There Madame Guillaume reasserted her rights, and, for the first time, placed Augustine next herself, Virginie taking her place on the fourth chair, next to Lebas.

During the sermon all went well between Augustine and Theodore, who, standing behind a pillar, worshiped his Madonna with fervent devotion; but at the elevation of the Host, Madame Guillaume discovered, rather late, that her daughter Augustine was holding her prayer-book upside down.

She was about to speak to her strongly, when, lowering her veil, she interrupted her own devotions to look in the direction where her daughter’s eyes found attraction.

By the help of her spectacles she saw the young artist, whose fashionable elegance seemed to proclaim him a cavalry officer on leave rather than a tradesman of the neighborhood.

It is difficult to conceive of the state of violent agitation in which Madame Guillaume found herself--she, who flattered herself on having brought up her daughters to perfection--on discovering in Augustine a clandestine passion of which her prudery and ignorance exaggerated the perils.

She believed her daughter to be cankered to the core.

“Hold your book right way up, miss,” she muttered in a low voice, tremulous with wrath.

She snatched away the tell-tale prayer-book and returned it with the letter-press right way up.

“Do not allow your eyes to look anywhere but at your prayers,” she added, “or I shall have something to say to you.

Your father and I will talk to you after church.

” These words came like a thunderbolt on poor Augustine.

She felt faint;

but, torn between the distress she felt and the dread of causing a commotion in church she bravely concealed her anguish.

It was, however, easy to discern the stormy state of her soul from the trembling of her prayer-book, and the tears which dropped on every page she turned.

From the furious glare shot at him by Madame Guillaume the artist saw the peril into which his love affair had fallen; he went out, with a raging soul, determined to venture all.

“Go to your room, miss!

” said Madame Guillaume, on their return home;

“we will send for you, but take care not to quit it.

” The conference between the husband and wife was conducted so secretly that at first nothing was heard of it.

Virginie, however, who had tried to give her sister courage by a variety of gentle remonstrances, carried her good nature so far as to listen at the door of her mother’s bedroom where the discussion was held, to catch a word or two.

The first time she went down to the lower floor she heard her father exclaim, “Then, madame, do you wish to kill your daughter?

” “My poor dear!

” said Virginie, in tears, “papa takes your part.

” “And what do they want to do to Theodore?

” asked the innocent girl.