tural poesy. Her hair, until then simply
wound about her head, she now curled and braided. Her dress showed
some research. The vine which was running wild and naturally among the
branches of the old elm, was transplanted, cut and trained over a green
and pretty trellis.

After the return of old Sauviat (then seventy years of age) from a trip
to Paris in December, 1822, the vicar came to see him one evening, and
after a few insignificant remarks he said suddenly:--

"You had better think of marrying your daughter, Sauviat. At your age
you ought not to put off the accomplishment of so important a duty."

"But is Veronique willing to be married?" asked the old man, startled.

"As you please, father," she said, lowering her eyes.

"Yes, we'll marry her!" cried stout Madame Sauviat, smiling.

"Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?"
said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."

Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat, a man in whose eyes money seemed to constitute
the whole of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had never seen
in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property to another
self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich bourgeois,--so
long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain the
characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who possessed
about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on behalf of his
son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making establishment, the
hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood for her exemplary
conduct and Christian principles. Sauviat had politely refused, without
saying anything to Veronique. The day after the vicar--a very important
personage in the eyes of the Sauviat household--had mentioned the
necessary of marrying Veronique, whose confessor he was, the old man
shaved and dressed himself as for a fete-day, and went out without
saying a word to his wife or daughter; both knew very well, however,
that the father was in search of a son-in-law. Old Sauviat went to
Monsieur Graslin.

Monsieur Graslin, a rich banker in Limoges, had, like Sauviat himself,
started from Auvergne without a penny; he came to Limoges to be a
porter, found a place as an office-boy in a financial house, and there,
like many other financiers, he made his way by dint of economy, and also
through fortunate circumstances. Cashier at twenty-five years of age,
partner ten years later, in the firm of Perret and Grossetete, he end