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.
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