p stairs alive. It
took two men to carry him up; and when he was at length quiet in bed,
Marguerite went down to the porter's lodge, and sobbed there a whole
hour, saying her poor master had the gout, the rheumatics, and a bad
asthma; that though he had been got up stairs, he would never come
down again alive; that if she could only get him to confess his sins
and make his will, she would not mind it so much; but that when
she spoke of the lawyer or the priest, he blasphemed at her like a
heathen, and declared that he would live to bury her and everybody
else."

Monsieur Ramin heard Catharine with great attention, forgot to finish
his soup, and remained for five minutes in profound rumination,
without so much as perceiving two customers who had entered the shop
and were waiting to be served. When aroused, he was heard to exclaim:

"What an excellent opportunity!"

Monsieur Bonelle had been Ramin's predecessor. The succession of the
latter to the shop was a mystery. No one ever knew how it was that
this young and poor assistant managed to replace his patron. Some said
that he had detected Monsieur Bonelle in frauds which he threatened
to expose unless the business were given up to him as the price of his
silence; others averred, that having drawn a prize in the lottery,
he had resolved to set up a fierce opposition over the way, and
that Monsieur Bonelle, having obtained a hint of his intentions, had
thought it most prudent to accept the trifling sum his clerk offered,
and avoid a ruinous competition. Some charitable souls--moved no doubt
by Monsieur Bonelle's misfortune--endeavored to console and pump him;
but all they could get from him was the bitter exclamation, "To think
I should have been duped by _him_!" For Ramin had the art, though
then a mere youth, to pass himself off on his master as an innocent
provincial lad. Those who sought an explanation from the new mercer
were still more unsuccessful. "My good old master," he said in his
jovial way, "felt in need of repose, and so I obligingly relieved him
of all business and botheration."

Years passed away; Ramin prospered, and neither thought nor heard
of his "good old master." The house, of which he tenanted the lower
portion, was offered for sale. He had long coveted it, and had almost
concluded an agreement with the actual owner, when Monsieur Bonelle
unexpectedly stepped in at the eleventh hour, and by offering a trifle
more secured the bargain. The rage an