past they had heard
their father, who was given to sneering, complain of it.

The brother and sister considered the application of the Lorrains from
the point of view of such reminiscences, which were not at all
favorable for Pierrette. To take charge of an orphan, a girl, a
cousin, who might become their legal heir in case neither of them
married,--this was a matter that needed discussion. The question was
considered and debated under all its aspects. In the first place, they
had never seen Pierrette. Then, what a trouble it would be to have a
young girl to look after. Wouldn't it commit them to some obligations
towards her? Could they send the girl away if they did not like her?
Besides, wouldn't they have to marry her? and if Jerome found a
yoke-mate among the heiresses of Provins they ought to keep all their
property for his children. A yokemate for Jerome, according to Sylvie,
meant a stupid, rich and ugly girl who would let herself be governed.
They decided to refuse the Lorrain request. Sylvie agreed to write the
answer. Business being rather urgent just then she delayed writing,
and the forewoman coming forward with an offer for the stock and
good-will of the "Family Sister," which the brother and sister
accepted, the matter went entirely out of the old maid's mind.

Sylvie Rogron and her brother departed for Provins four years before
the time when the coming of Brigaut threw such excitement into
Pierrette's life. But the doings of the pair after their arrival at
Provins are as necessary to relate as their life in Paris; for Provins
was destined to be not less fatal to Pierrette than the commercial
antecedents of her cousins!

III

PATHOLOGY OF RETIRED MERCERS

When the petty shopkeeper who has come to Paris from the provinces
returns to the provinces from Paris he brings with him a few ideas;
then he loses them in the habits and ways of provincial life into
which he plunges, and his reforming notions leave him. From this there
do result, however, certain trifling, slow, successive changes by
which Paris scratches the surface of the provincial towns. This
process marks the transition of the ex-shopkeeper into the substantial
bourgeois, but it acts like an illness upon him. No retail shopkeeper
can pass with impunity from his perpetual chatter into dead silence,
from his Parisian activity to the stillness of provincial life. When
these worthy persons h