Amid these curious relics, Madame Saillard always sat on a sofa of
modern mahogany, near a fireplace full of ashes and without fire, on

the mantel-shelf of which stood a clock, some antique bronzes,
candelabra with paper flowers but no candles, for the careful

housewife lighted the room with a tall tallow candle always guttering
down into the flat brass candlestick which held it. Madame Saillard's

face, despite its wrinkles, was expressive of obstinacy and severity,
narrowness of ideas, an uprightness that might be called quadrangular,

a religion without piety, straightforward, candid avarice, and the
peace of a quiet conscience. You may see in certain Flemish pictures

the wives of burgomasters cut out by nature on the same pattern and
wonderfully reproduced on canvas; but these dames wear fine robes of

velvet and precious stuffs, whereas Madame Saillard possessed no
robes, only that venerablegarment called in Touraine and Picardy

"cottes," elsewhere petticoats, or skirts pleated behind and on each
side, with other skirts hanging over them. Her bust was inclosed in

what was called a "casaquin," another obsolete name for a short gown
or jacket. She continued to wear a cap with starched wings, and shoes

with high heels. Though she was now fifty-seven years old, and her
lifetime of vigorous household work ought now to be rewarded with

well-earned repose, she was incessantly employed in knitting her
husband's stockings and her own, and those of an uncle, just as her

countrywomen knit them, moving about the room, talking, pacing up and
down the garden, or looking round the kitchen to watch what was going

on.
The Saillard's avarice, which was really imposed on them in the first

instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier
got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in

the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and
which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the

daughter, went to market every morning with her mother, and the two
did all the work of the house. The mother cooked well, especially a

duck with turnips; but, according to Saillard, no one could equal
Elisabeth in hashing the remains of a leg of mutton with onions. "You

might eat your boots with those onions and not know it," he remarked.
As soon as Elisabeth knew how to hold a needle, her mother had her

mend the household linen and her father's coats. Always at work, like
a servant, she never went out alone. Though living close by the

boulevard du Temple, where Franconi, La Gaite, and l'Ambigu-Comique
were within a stone's throw, and, further on, the Porte-Saint-Martin,

Elisabeth had never seen a comedy. When she asked to "see what it was
like" (with the Abbe Gaudron's permission, be it understood), Monsieur

Baudoyer took her--for the glory of the thing, and to show her the
finest that was to be seen--to the Opera, where they were playing "The

Chinese Laborer." Elisabeth thought "the comedy" as wearisome as the
plague of flies, and never wished to see another. On Sundays, after

walking four times to and fro between the place Royale and Saint-
Paul's church (for her mother made her practise the precepts and the

duties of religion), her parents took her to the pavement in front of
the Cafe Ture, where they sat on chairs placed between a railing and

the wall. The Saillards always made haste to reach the place early so
as to choose the best seats, and found much entertainment in watching

the passers-by. In those days the Cafe Ture was the rendezvous of the
fashionable society of the Marais, the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the

circumjacent regions.
Elisabeth never wore anything but cotton gowns in summer and merino in

the winter, which she made herself. Her mother gave her twenty francs
a month for her expenses, but her father, who was very fond of her,

mitigated this rigorous treatment with a few presents. She never read
what the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul's and the family director,

called profane books. This discipline had borne fruit. Forced to
employ her feelings on some passion or other, Elisabeth became eager

after gain. Though she was not lacking in sense or perspicacity,
religious theories, and her complete ignorance of higher emotions had

encircled all her faculties with an iron hand; they were exercised
solely on the commonest things of life; spent in a few directions they

were able to concentrate themselves on a matter in hand. Repressed by
religious devotion, her natural intelligence exercised itself within

the limits marked out by cases of conscience, which form a mine of
subtleties among which self-interest selects its subterfuges. Like

those saintly personages in whom religion does not stifle ambition,
Elisabeth was capable of requiring others to do a blamable action that

she might reap the fruits; and she would have been, like them again,
implacable as to her dues and dissembling in her actions. Once

offended, she watched her adversaries with the perfidious patience of
a cat, and was capable of bringing about some cold and complete

vengeance, and then laying it to the account of God. Until her
marriage the Saillards lived without other society than that of the

Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed vicar of Saint-Paul's
after the restoration of Catholic worship. Besides this ecclesiastic,

who was a friend of the late Madame Bidault, a paternal uncle of
Madame Saillard, an old paper-dealer retired from business ever since

the year II. of the Republic, and now sixty-nine years old, came to
see them on Sundays only, because on that day no government business

went on.
This little old man, with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a

tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray
hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with

straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled
thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little

Saillard," stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of
mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-

ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures
until we see them performing their various functions. On the present

occasion he had come on foot to dine with the Saillards, intending to
return in the same way to the rue Greneta, where he lived on the third

floor of an old house. His business was that of discounting commercial
paper in the quartier Saint-Martin, where he was known by the nickname

of "Gigonnet," from the nervous convulsive movement with which he
lifted his legs in walking, like a cat. Monsieur Bidault began this

business in the year II. in partnership with a dutchman named
Werbrust, a friend of Gobseck.

Some time later Saillard made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame
Transon, wholesale dealers in pottery, with an establishment in the

rue de Lesdiguieres, who took an interest in Elisabeth and introduced
young Isadore Baudoyer to the family with the intention of marrying

her. Gigonnet approved of the match, for he had long employed a
certain Mitral, uncle of the young man, as clerk. Monsieur and Madame

Baudoyer, father and mother of Isidore, highly respected leather-
dressers in the rue Censier, had slowly made a moderate fortune out of

a small trade. After marrying their only son, on whom they settled
fifty thousand francs, they determined to live in the country, and had

lately removed to the neighborhood of Ile-d'Adam, where after a time
they were joined by Mitral. They frequently came to Paris, however,

where they kept a corner in the house in the rue Censier which they
gave to Isidore on his marriage. The elder Baudoyers had an income of

about three thousand francs left to live upon after establishing their
son.

Mitral was a being with a sinister wig, a face the color of Seine
water, lighted by a pair of Spanish-tobacco-colored eyes, cold as a

well-rope, always smelling a rat, and close-mouthed about his
property. He probably made his fortune in his own hole and corner,

just as Werbrust and Gigonnet made theirs in the quartier Saint-
Martin.

Though the Saillards' circle of acquaintance increased, neither their
ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint's-days of

father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully
observed, also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter,

Christmas, New Year's day, and Epiphany. These festivals were preceded
by great domestic sweepings and a universalclearing up of the house,

which added an element of usefulness to the ceremonies. When the
festival day came, the presents were offered with much pomp and an

accompaniment of flowers,--silk stockings or a fur cap for old
Saillard; gold earrings and articles of plate for Elisabeth or her

husband, for whom, little by little, the parents were accumulating a
whole silver service; silk petticoats for Madame Saillard, who laid

the stuff by and never made it up. The recipient of these gifts was
placed in an armchair and asked by those present for a certain length

of time, "Guess what we have for you!" Then came a splendid dinner,
lasting at least five hours, to which were invited the Abbe Gaudron,

Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard, under-head-clerk to Monsieur