At the Sign of the Cat Racket | Page 9

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