Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him.
“Sit down there,” said Guillaume, pointing to the stool.
As the old master draper had never yet bid his assistant be seated in his presence, Joseph Lebas was startled.
“What do you think of these notes?” asked Guillaume.
“They will never be paid.”
“Why?”
“Well, I heard the day before yesterday Étienne and Co. had made their payments in gold.”
“Oh, oh!” said the draper. “Well, one must be very ill to show one’s bile. Let us speak of something else.—Joseph, the stocktaking is done.”
“Yes, monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you have ever made.”
“Do not use newfangled words. Say the profits, Joseph. Do you know, my boy, that this result is partly owing to you? And I do not intend to pay you a salary any longer. Madame Guillaume has suggested to me to take you into partnership.—‘Guillaume and Lebas’; will not that make a good business name? We might add, ‘and Co.’ to round off the firm’s signature.”
Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide them.
“Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such kindness? I only do my duty. It was so much already that you should take an interest in a poor orph—”
He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right hand, and dared not look at the old man, who smiled as he thought that this modest young fellow no doubt needed, as he had needed once on a time, some encouragement to complete his explanation.
“To be sure,” said Virginie’s father, “you do not altogether deserve this favor, Joseph. You have not so much confidence in me as I have in you.” (The young man looked up quickly.) “You know all the secrets of the cashbox. For the last two years I have told you almost all my concerns. I have sent you to travel in our goods. In short, I have nothing on my conscience as regards you. But you—you have a soft place, and you have never breathed a word of it.” Joseph Lebas blushed. “Ah, ha!” cried Guillaume, “so you thought you could deceive an old fox like me? When you knew that I had scented the Lecocq bankruptcy?”
“What, monsieur?” replied Joseph Lebas, looking at his master as keenly as his master looked at him, “you knew that I was in love?”
“I know everything, you rascal,” said the worthy and cunning old merchant, pulling the assistant’s ear. “And I forgive you—I did the same myself.”
“And you will give her to me?”
“Yes—with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you as much by will, and we will start on our new career under the name of a new firm. We will do good business yet, my boy!” added the old man, getting up and flourishing his arms. “I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like trade. Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it are simpletons. To be on the scent of a good bargain, to hold your own on ’Change, to watch as anxiously as at the gaming-table whether Étienne and Co. will fail or no, to see a regiment of Guards march past all dressed in your cloth, to trip your neighbor up—honestly of course!—to make the goods cheaper than others can; then to carry out an undertaking which you have planned, which begins, grows, totters, and succeeds! to know the workings of every house of business as well as a minister of police, so as never to make a mistake; to hold up your head in the midst of wrecks, to have friends by correspondence in every manufacturing town; is not that a perpetual game, Joseph? That is life, that is! I shall die in that harness, like old Chevrel, but taking it easy now, all the same.”
In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely looked at his assistant, who was weeping copiously. “Why, Joseph, my poor boy, what is the matter?”
“Oh, I love her so! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails me; I believe—”
“Well, well, boy,” said the old man, touched, “you are happier than you know, by God! For she loves you. I know it.”
And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the young man.
“Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!” exclaimed Joseph Lebas in his rapture.
He was about to rush out of the room when he felt himself clutched by a hand of iron, and his astonished master spun him round in front of him once more.
“What has Augustine to do with this matter?” he asked, in a voice which instantly froze the luckless Joseph.
“Is it not she that—that—I love?” stammered the assistant.
Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guillaume sat down again, and rested his long head in his hands to consider the perplexing situation in which he found himself. Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in despair, remained standing.
“Joseph,” the draper said with frigid dignity, “I was speaking of Virginie. Love cannot be made to order, I know. I know, too, that you can be trusted. We will forget all this. I will not let Augustine marry before Virginie.—Your interest will be ten percent.”
The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power of courage and eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his turn—spoke for a quarter of an hour, with so much warmth and feeling, that he altered the situation. If the question had been a matter of business the old tradesman would have had fixed principles to guide his decision; but, tossed a thousand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment, without a compass, he floated, as
