of Leon? Poor woman! And her little daughter?"

"That is the saddest part, my dear. A relative of poor Voisin writes me
that they are too poor to take charge of the child, and she must be sent
to an orphan asylum."

"Oh, those peasants!"

The druggist was silent for a moment, rubbing his thick blond beard;
then suddenly looking at his wife with kindly eyes:

"Say, Mimi, the child is the foster sister of our Leon. Suppose we give
her a home?"

"I should think so," was the quiet reply of the pretty wife.

"Well done," cried Bayard, as, caring little if he were seen by his
clerks and store-boys, he leaned towards his wife and kissed her
forehead, "well done! you're a good woman, Mimi. We will take little
Norine with us, and bring her up with Leon. That won't ruin us, eh?
Besides, I have just made a good stroke in quinine. We will go after the
child Sunday to Argenteuil, sha'n't we?"

"We will make that our Sunday excursion."

II.

Good people, these Bayards; an honor to the drug trade. Their marriage
had united two houses which had been for a long time rivals; for Bayard
was the son of _The Silver Pill_, founded by his great-great-grandfather
in 1756 in the Rue Vieille du Temple, and had espoused the daughter of
the _Offering to Esculapius_, of the Rue des Lombards, an establishment
which dated from the First Empire, as was shown by the sign, copied from
the celebrated painting of Guerin. Honest people, excellent people--and
there are many more, like them, whatever folks may say, among the older
Paris houses, conservators of old traditions; going to the second tier,
on Sunday, at the opera comique, and ignorant of false weights and
measures. It was the cure of Blancs-Manteaux who had managed that
marriage with his confrere of Saint-Merry. The first had ministered at
the death-bed of the elder Bayard, and was dismayed to see a young man
of twenty-five all alone in a house so gloomy as that of _The Silver
Pill_, justly famed for its ipecac; and the second was anxious to
establish Mademoiselle Simonin, to whom he had administered her first
communion, and whose father was one of his most important parishioners,
old Simonin of the _Offering to Esculapius_, celebrated for its camphor.
The negotiations were successful; camphor and ipecac, two excellent
specialties, were united in the holy bonds of matrimony, there was a
dinner and ball at the Grand Vefour, and now for ten years, tranquilly
working every day, summer a