If one of them,
whose character was unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old
tradesmen knew how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and
they did not hesitate to entrust the happiness of their daughters to
men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. Guillaume was one
of these men of the old school, and if he had their ridiculous side,
he had all their good qualities; and Joseph Lebas, the chief
assistant, an orphan without any fortune, was in his mind destined to
be the husband of Virginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not
share the symmetrical ideas of his master, who would not for an empire
have given his second daughter in marriage before the elder. The
unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given to Mademoiselle
Augustine, the younger. In order to justify this passion, which had
grown up in secret, it is necessary to inquire a little further into
the springs of the absolute government which ruled the old
cloth-merchant's household.
Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the
very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur
Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than
once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her
long, thin face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or
of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head--that
of a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying
shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow.
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