led cages called counting-rooms, forever tying up bundles,
receiving and making change, snarling at the clerks, and repeating the
same old speeches to customers.

The small amount of brains possessed by the brother and sister had been
wholly absorbed in maintaining their business, in getting and keeping
money, and in learning the special laws and usages of the Parisian
market. Thread, needles, ribbons, pins, buttons, tailors' furnishings,
in short, the enormous quantity of things which go to make up a mercer's
stock, had taken all their capacity. Outside of their business they knew
absolutely nothing; they were even ignorant of Paris. To them the great
city was merely a region spreading around the Rue Saint-Denis. Their
narrow natures could see no field except the shop. They were clever
enough in nagging their clerks and their young women and in proving them
to blame. Their happiness lay in seeing all hands busy at the counters,
exhibiting the merchandise, and folding it up again. When they heard
the six or eight voices of the young men and women glibly gabbling the
consecrated phrases by which clerks reply to the remarks of customers,
the day was fine to them, the weather beautiful! But on the really
fine days, when the blue of the heavens brightened all Paris, and the
Parisians walked about to enjoy themselves and cared for no "goods" but
those they carried on their back, the day was overcast to the Rogrons.
"Bad weather for sales," said that pair of imbeciles.

The skill with which Rogron could tie up a parcel made him an object
of admiration to all his apprentices. He could fold and tie and see all
that happened in the street and in the farthest recesses of the shop
by the time he handed the parcel to his customer with a "Here it is,
madame; _nothing else_ to-day?" But the poor fool would have been ruined
without his sister. Sylvie had common-sense and a genius for trade. She
advised her brother in their purchases and would pitilessly send him to
remote parts of France to save a trifle of cost. The shrewdness which
all women more or less possess, not being employed in the service of
her heart, had drifted into that of speculation. A business to pay
for,--that thought was the mainspring which kept the machine going and
gave it an infernal activity.

Rogron was really only head-clerk; he understood nothing of his business
as a whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had failed in
his case to instruct him