to carry out an undertaking which you
have planned, which begins, grows, totters, and succeeds! to know the
workings of every house of business as well as a minister of police, so
as never to make a mistake; to hold up your head in the midst of wrecks,
to have friends by correspondence in every manufacturing town; is not
that a perpetual game, Joseph? That is life, that is! I shall die in
that harness, like old Chevrel, but taking it easy now, all the same."

In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely looked
at his assistant, who was weeping copiously. "Why, Joseph, my poor boy,
what is the matter?"

"Oh, I love her so! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails me; I
believe----"

"Well, well, boy," said the old man, touched, "you are happier than you
know, by God! For she loves you. I know it."

And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the young man.

"Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!" exclaimed Joseph Lebas
in his rapture.

He was about to rush out of the room when he felt himself clutched by a
hand of iron, and his astonished master spun him round in front of him
once more.

"What has Augustine to do with this matter?" he asked, in a voice which
instantly froze the luckless Joseph.

"Is it not she that--that--I love?" stammered the assistant.

Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guillaume sat down
again, and rested his long head in his hands to consider the perplexing
situation in which he found himself. Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in
despair, remained standing.

"Joseph," the draper said with frigid dignity, "I was speaking of
Virginie. Love cannot be made to order, I know. I know, too, that you
can be trusted. We will forget all this. I will not let Augustine marry
before Virginie.--Your interest will be ten per cent."

The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power of courage and
eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his turn--spoke for a quarter
of an hour, with so much warmth and feeling, that he altered the
situation. If the question had been a matter of business the old
tradesman would have had fixed principles to guide his decision; but,
tossed a thousand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment,
without a compass, he floated, as he told himself, undecided in the face
of such an unexpected event. Carried away by his fatherly kindness, he
began to beat about the bush.

"Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are t