is
illimitable talking power in order to digest in seclusion the ancestral
episodes of the Grandissimes and De Grapions, laid pleasant plans for
the immediate future. To-morrow morning he would leave the shop in
Raoul's care and call on M. Honore Grandissime to advise with him
concerning the retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrow
evening he would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet up
to the doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening he
would go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who had
looked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged in
Frowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours were
to be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his "dead stock."

And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly planned,
there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which, now on this
side, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous whisper to make
haste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed, and was gliding
about, the expectation of a crisis.

Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of Number
19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen days of grace
allowed them in which to save their little fortress. For Palmyre's
assurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-money
to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it was
poor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree of
impracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was,
nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of any
really brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps
they had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing all
possible ways and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fast
bearing down upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad
managers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay;
could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger;
could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult their
convenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soul
weep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills-payable in their
orbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs. Their economy knew how to
avoid what the Creole-African apothegm calls _commerce Man Lizon--qui
assete pou' trois picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin_ (bo