ith others in misfortune. To them, virtue, honor, loyalty, all human
sentiments consisted solely in the payment of their bills. Irritable and
irritating, without feelings, and sordid in their economy, the brother
and sister bore a dreadful reputation among the other merchants of the
rue Saint-Denis. Had it not been for their connection with Provins,
where they went three or four times a year, when they could close the
shop for a day or two, they would have had no clerks or young women. But
old Rogron, their father, sent them all the unfortunate young people
of his neighborhood, whose parents wished to start them in business in
Paris. He obtained these apprentices by boasting, out of vanity, of
his son's success. Parents, attracted by the prospect of their children
being well-trained and closely watched, and also, by the hope of their
succeeding, eventually, to the business, sent whichever child was most
in the way at home to the care of the brother and sister. But no sooner
had the clerks or the young women found a way of escape from that
dreadful establishment than they fled, with rejoicings that increased
the already bad name of the Rogrons. New victims were supplied yearly by
the indefatigable old father.

From the time she was fifteen, Sylvie Rogron, trained to the simpering
of a saleswoman, had two faces,--the amiable face of the seller,
the natural face of a sour spinster. Her acquired countenance was a
marvellous bit of mimicry. She was all smiles. Her voice, soft and
wheedling, gave a commercial charm to business. Her real face was that
we have already seen projecting from the half-opened blinds; the mere
sight of her would have put to flight the most resolute Cossack of 1815,
much as that horde were said to like all kinds of Frenchwomen.

When the letter from the Lorrains reached the brother and sister, they
were in mourning for their father, from whom they inherited the house
which had been as good as stolen from Pierrette's grandmother, also
certain lands bought by their father, and certain moneys acquired by
usurious loans and mortgages to the peasantry, whose bits of ground the
old drunkard expected to possess. The yearly taking of stock was just
over. The price of the "Family Sister" had, at last, been paid in full.
The Rogrons owned about sixty thousand francs' worth of merchandise,
forty thousand in a bank or in their cash-box, and the value of their
business. Sitting on a bench covered with striped-gree