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 which
lends such charm to pictures of the Dutch school. The white linen, the
silver, the cut glass, were brilliant accessories, and made more
picturesque by strong contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the
head of the family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and the
pure form of Augustine, near whom a fat chubby-cheeked maid was
standing, composed so strange a group; the heads were so singular, and
every face had so candid an expression; it was so easy to read the
peace, the silence, the modest way of life in this family, that to an
artist accustomed to render nature, there was something hopeless in
any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by chance.
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