hat is called being "at par" in the rue
Saint-Denis. Sylvie had a salary of four hundred francs. At nineteen
years of age she was independent. At twenty, she was the second
demoiselle in the Maison Julliard, wholesale silk dealers at the
"Chinese Worm" rue Saint-Denis. The history of the sister was that of
the brother. Young Jerome-Denis Rogron entered the establishment of one
of the largest wholesale mercers in the same street, the Maison Guepin,
at the "Three Distaffs." When Sylvie Rogron, aged twenty-one, had risen
to be forewoman at a thousand francs a year Jerome-Denis, with even
better luck, was head-clerk at eighteen, with a salary of twelve hundred
francs.

Brother and sister met on Sundays and fete-days, which they passed in
economical amusements; they dined out of Paris, and went to Saint-Cloud,
Meudon, Belleville, or Vincennes. Towards the close of the year 1815
they clubbed their savings, amounting to about twenty thousand francs,
earned by the sweat of their brows, and bought of Madame Guenee the
property and good-will of her celebrated shop, the "Family Sister," one
of the largest retail establishments in the quarter. Sylvie kept the
books and did the writing. Jerome-Denis was master and head-clerk both.
In 1821, after five years' experience, competition became so fierce that
it was all the brother and sister could do to carry on the business and
maintain its reputation.

Though Sylvie was at this time scarcely forty, her natural ugliness,
combined with hard work and a certain crabbed look (caused as much by
the conformation of her features as by her cares), made her seem like a
woman of fifty. At thirty-eight Jerome Rogron presented to the eyes of
his customers the silliest face that ever looked over a counter. His
retreating forehead, flattened by fatigue, was marked by three long
wrinkles. His grizzled hair, cut close, expressed in some indefinable
way the stupidity of a cold-blooded animal. The glance of his bluish
eyes had neither flame nor thought in it. His round, flat face excited
no sympathy, nor even a laugh on the lips of those who might be
examining the varieties of the Parisian species; on the contrary, it
saddened them. He was, like his father, short and fat, but his figure
lacked the latter's brutal obesity, and showed, instead, an almost
ridiculous debility. His father's high color was changed in him to the
livid flabbiness peculiar to persons who live in close back-shops, or
in those rai