duty
this was.

The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these
young fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich
manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a
hundred thousand francs the day when they were old enough to settle in
life, Guillaume regarded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of an
old-world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops, where
the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them work like
Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business which would
harry ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes now swell the
columns of the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace of this solemn
house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article
of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals strict
order and economy. The most waggish of the three youths often amused
himself by writing the date of its first appearance on the Gruyere
cheese which was left to their tender mercies at breakfast, and which it
was their pleasure to leave untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few
others of the same stamp, would sometimes bring a smile on the face of
the younger of Guillaume's daughters, the pretty maiden who has just now
appeared to the bewitched man in the street.

Though each of these apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum for
his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain at the
master's table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume talked of
dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the
thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could never
think of spending a night away from the house without having given, long
before, a plausible reason for such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each
in his turn, two of them accompanied the Guillaume family to Mass at
Saint-Leu, and to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply
attired in cotton print, each took the arm of an apprentice and walked
in front, under the piercing eye of their mother, who closed the little
family procession with her husband, accustomed by her to carry two large
prayer-books, bound in black morocco. The second apprentice received
no salary. As for the eldest, whose twelve years of perseverance and
discretion had initiated him into the secrets of the house, he was paid
eight hundred francs a year as the reward of his labors. On certai