ught for
three picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that made
their very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as
it was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook's
leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.

On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime,
on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an old
Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop,--this blacksmith's
shop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied and
dormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, had
halted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman
the whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honore Grandissime.

Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase within
the archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have thanked a
prince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm rusks, coming
from a bakery in the paved court below, rushed through the archway and
up the stair and accompanied her into the cemetery-like silence of the
counting-room. There were in the department some fourteen clerks. It was
a den of Grandissimes. More than half of them were men beyond middle
life, and some were yet older. One or two were so handsome, under their
noble silvery locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, for
instance,--would have thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is the
head of the house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in the
silent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the
room. There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with
very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a
privileged loudness.

"H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.

A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silent
bow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather than care or
years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.

"Madame,"--in an undertone.

"Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in French.

But the young man responded in English.

"You har one tenant, ent it?"

"Yes, seh."

"Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."

"No, seh; M. Grandissime."

"M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."

"I muz see M. Grandissime."

Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.

The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The quill
of the sore-ey