ie Poucette; but the latter would have had
the dish if it had cost her two hundred dollars. The only time she
had broken bread in Jean Jacques' house, she had eaten cake from
this fruit-dish; and to her, as to the parish generally, the dish so
beautifully shaped, with its graceful depth and its fine-chased handles,
was symbol of the social caste of the Barbilles, as the gold Cock of
Beaugard was sign of their civic and commercial glory.

Jean Jacques, who had moved about all day with an almost voluble
affability, seeming not to realize the tragedy going on, or, if he
realized it, rising superior to it, was noticed to stand still suddenly
when the auctioneer put up the fruit-dish for sale. Then the smile left
his face, and the reddish glow in his eyes, which had been there since
the burning of the mill, fled, and a touch of amazement and confusion
took its place. All in a moment he was like a fluttered dweller of the
wilds to whom comes some tremor of danger.

His mouth opened as though he would forbid the selling of the heirloom;
but it closed again, because he knew he had no right to withhold it from
the hammer; and he took on a look like that which comes to the eyes of a
child when it faces humiliating denial. Quickly as it came, however, it
vanished, for he remembered that he could buy the dish himself. He could
buy it himself and keep it.... Yet what could he do with it? Even so, he
could keep it. It could still be his till better days came.

The auctioneer's voice told off the value of the fruitdish--"As an
heirloom, as an antique; as a piece of workmanship impossible of
duplication in these days of no handicraft; as good pure silver, bearing
the head of Louis Quinze--beautiful, marvellous, historic, honourable,"
and Jean Jacques made ready to bid. Then he remembered he had no
money--he who all his life had been able to take a roll of bills from
his pocket as another man took a packet of letters. His glance fell
in shame, and the words died on his lips, even as M. Manotel, the
auctioneer, was about to add another five-dollar bid to the price, which
already was standing at forty dollars.

It was at this moment Jean Jacques heard a woman's voice bidding, then
two women's voices. Looking up he saw that one of the women was Mere
Langlois and the other was Virginie Poucette, who had made the first
bid. For a moment they contended, and then Mere Langlois fell out of
the contest, and Virginie continued it with an ambit