ne of their old neighbors in the Rue Neuve-Coquenard, a
small haberdasher, who had not been able to get on, but continued humbly
to sell thread and needles to the thrifty folks of the neighborhood.
The haberdasher, Mother Delarue, as she was called, had remained a widow
after one year of married life. Pierre, her boy, had grown up under the
shadow of the bakery, the cradle of the Desvarennes's fortunes.

On Sundays the mistress would give him a gingerbread or a cracknel, and
amuse herself with his baby prattle. She did not lose sight of him
when she removed to the Rue Vivienne. Pierre had entered the elementary
school of the neighborhood, and by his precocious intelligence and
exceptional application, had not been long in getting to the top of his
class. The boy had left school after gaining an exhibition admitting
him to the Chaptal College. This hard worker, who was in a fair way of
making his own position without costing his relatives anything, greatly
interested Madame Desvarennes. She found in this plucky nature a
striking analogy to herself. She formed projects for Pierre's future;
in fancy she saw him enter the Polytechnic school, and leave it with
honors. The young man had the choice of becoming a mining or civil
engineer, and of entering the government service.

He was hesitating what to do when the mistress came and offered him a
situation in her firm as junior partner; it was a golden bridge that she
placed before him. With his exceptional capacities he was not long
in giving to the house a new impulse. He perfected the machinery, and
triumphantly defied all competition. All this was a happy dream in which
Pierre was to her a real son; her home became his, and she monopolized
him completely. But suddenly a shadow came o'er the spirit of her
dreams. Pierre's mother, the little haberdasher, proud of her son, would
she consent to give him up to a stranger? Oh! if Pierre had only been
an orphan! But one could not rob a mother of her son! And Madame
Desvarennes stopped the flight of her imagination. She followed Pierre
with anxious looks; but she forbade herself to dispose of the youth: he
did not belong to her.

This woman, at the age of thirty-five, still young in heart, was
disturbed by feelings which she strove, but vainly, to rule. She hid
them especially from her husband, whose repining chattering she feared.
If she had once shown him her weakness he would have overwhelmed her
daily with the burden of his