the orphan; perhaps she did not know
that he loved her. On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his
long legs, his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had
found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her
dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. Nothing could
be more natural than these two passions at cross-purposes, born in the
silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood. The
mute and constant looks which made the young people's eyes meet by sheer
need of change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered peace, was
sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love. The habit of
seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our reading there the
qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its defects.

"At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
their knees to a suitor!" said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he
read the first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the conscript
classes.

From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter
fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much the
same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit
of business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt
by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received from
his predecessor under similar conditions! Joseph Lebas, who was now
three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle which a difference of
fifteen years placed between Augustine and himself. Being also too
clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur Guillaume's purpose, he knew
his inexorable principles well enough to feel sure that the second would
never marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose heart was
as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered in silence.

This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the
heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La Trappe.
But to give a full account of events as well as of feelings, it is
needful to go back to some months before the scene with which this story
opens. At dusk one evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the
Cat and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture which might
have arrested every painter in the world. The shop was not yet lighted,
and was as a dark cave beyond which the dining-room was visible. A
hanging lamp shed the yellow light