g
business, but preferred to work at their ease, and enjoy life, instead
of wearing themselves out with endless anxieties.

"For instance," Lisa would add in her expansive moments, "I have, you
know, a cousin in Paris. I never see him, as the two families have
fallen out. He has taken the name of Saccard,[*] on account of certain
matters which he wants to be forgotten. Well, this cousin of mine, I'm
told, makes millions and millions of francs; but he gets no enjoyment
out of life. He's always in a state of feverish excitement, always
rushing hither and thither, up to his neck in all sorts of worrying
business. Well, it's impossible, isn't it, for such a man to eat his
dinner peaceably in the evening? We, at any rate, can take our meals
comfortably, and make sure of what we eat, and we are not harassed by
worries as he is. The only reason why people should care for money
is that money's wanted for one to live. People like comfort; that's
natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and
giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can
ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather
sit still and cross my arms. And besides, I should like to see all those
millions of my cousin's. I can't say that I altogether believe in
them. I caught sight of him the other day in his carriage. He was quite
yellow, and looked ever so sly. A man who's making money doesn't have
that kind of expression. But it's his business, and not mine. For our
part, we prefer to make merely a hundred sous at a time, and to get a
hundred sous' worth of enjoyment out of them."

[*] See M. Zola's novel, _Money_.

The household was undoubtedly thriving. A daughter had been born to the
young couple during their first year of wedlock, and all three of
them looked blooming. The business went on prosperously, without any
laborious fatigue, just as Lisa desired. She had carefully kept free of
any possible source of trouble or anxiety, and the days went by in an
atmosphere of peaceful, unctuous prosperity. Their home was a nook of
sensible happiness--a comfortable manger, so to speak, where father,
mother, and daughter could grow sleek and fat. It was only Quenu who
occasionally felt sad, through thinking of his brother Florent. Up to
the year 1856 he had received letters from him at long intervals. Then
no more came, and he had learned from a newspaper that three convicts
having attempted to escape