They had accepted life as a commercial
enterprise, in which, above all, they must do credit to the business.
Not finding any great love in her husband, Virginie had set to work to
create it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his wife,
the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to Joseph Lebas
a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when Augustine plaintively set
forth her painful position, she had to face the deluge of commonplace
morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished to her
sister.
"The mischief is done, wife," said Joseph Lebas; "we must try to give
our sister good advice." Then the clever tradesman ponderously
analyzed the resources which law and custom might offer Augustine as a
means of escape at this crisis; he ticketed every argument, so to
speak, and arranged them in their degrees of weight under various
categories, as though they were articles of merchandise of different
qualities; then he put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended by
showing the necessity for his sister-in-law's taking violent steps
which could not satisfy the love she still had for her husband; and,
indeed, the feeling had revived in all its strength when she heard
Joseph Lebas speak of legal proceedings. Augustine thanked them, and
returned home even more undecided than she had been before consulting
them. She now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier,
intending to confide her troubles to her father and mother; for she
was like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries every
prescription, and even puts faith in old wives' remedies.
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