At the Sign of the Cat Racket | Page 8

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."
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