After racking his imagination, it
occurred to him to bribe the blowsy waiting-maid with gold. Thus a few
notes were exchanged at long intervals during the fortnight following
the ill-starred morning when Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so
scrutinized one another. At the present moment the young couple had
agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the day, and on Sunday,
at Saint-Leu, during Mass and vespers. Augustine had sent her dear
Theodore a list of the relations and friends of the family, to whom
the young painter tried to get access, in the hope of interesting, if
it were possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in
money and trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite
monstrous speculation, a thing unheard-of. Nothing meanwhile, was
altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. If Augustine was
absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic code, she stole
up to her room to make signals by means of a jar of flowers, if she
sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one observed it, not even her
mother. This will cause some surprise to those who have entered into
the spirit of the household, where an idea tainted with poetry would
be in startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could
venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and analyzed.
Nothing, however, could be more natural: the quiet barque that
navigated the stormy waters of the Paris Exchange, under the flag of
the Cat and Racket, was just now in the toils of one of these tempests
which, returning periodically, might be termed equinoctial.
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