nard had
married for love the daughter of a porter, an artificial-flower maker
employed by Mademoiselle Godard. Zelie Lorrain, a pupil, in the first
place, of the Conservatoire, then by turns a danseuse, a singer, and an
actress, had thought of doing as so many of the working-women do;
but the fear of consequences kept her from vice. She was floating
undecidedly along, when Minard appeared upon the scene with a definite
proposal of marriage. Zelie earned five hundred francs a year, Minard
had fifteen hundred. Believing that they could live on two thousand,
they married without settlements, and started with the utmost economy.
They went to live, like dove-turtles, near the barriere de Courcelles,
in a little apartment at three hundred francs a year, with white cotton
curtains to the windows, a Scotch paper costing fifteen sous a roll on
the walls, brick floors well polished, walnut furniture in the parlor,
and a tiny kitchen that was very clean. Zelie nursed her children
herself when they came, cooked, made her flowers, and kept the
house. There was something very touching in this happy and laborious
mediocrity. Feeling that Minard truly loved her, Zelie loved him. Love
begets love,--it is the abyssus abyssum of the Bible. The poor man
left his bed in the morning before his wife was up, that he might fetch
provisions. He carried the flowers she had finished, on his way to the
bureau, and bought her materials on his way back; then, while waiting
for dinner, he stamped out her leaves, trimmed the twigs, or rubbed
her colors. Small, slim, and wiry, with crisp red hair, eyes of a light
yellow, a skin of dazzling fairness, though blotched with red, the man
had a sturdy courage that made no show. He knew the science of writing
quite as well as Vimeux. At the office he kept in the background,
doing his allotted task with the collected air of a man who thinks and
suffers. His white eyelashes and lack of eyebrows induced the relentless
Bixiou to name him "the white rabbit." Minard--the Rabourdin of a
lower sphere--was filled with the desire of placing his Zelie in better
circumstances, and his mind searched the ocean of the wants of luxury in
hopes of finding an idea, of making some discovery or some improvement
which would bring him a rapid fortune. His apparent dulness was really
caused by the continual tension of his mind; he went over the history
of Cephalic Oils and the Paste of Sultans, lucifer matches and
portable gas, join