ep Lucie, he said to her, in a coaxing tone,
"Now then, Lucie, my child, it is half-past eight. Up, up with you, lazy
little one!"

How could he console himself for such lost happiness? He had his son,
yes--and he loved him very much--but the sight of Amedee increased M.
Violette's grief; for the child grew to look more like his mother every
day.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEMON ABSINTHE

Three or four times a year M. Violette, accompanied by his son, paid a
visit to an uncle of his deceased wife, whose heir Amedee might some day
become.

M. Isidore Gaufre had founded and made successful a large house for
Catholic books and pictures, to which he had added an important agency
for the sale of all kinds of religious objects. This vast establishment
was called, by a stroke of genius of its proprietor, "Bon Marche des
Paroisses," and was famous among all the French clergy. At last it
occupied the principal part of the house and all the out-buildings of an
old hotel on the Rue Servandoni, constructed in the pompous and
magnificent style of the latter part of the seventeenth century. He did a
great business there.

All day long, priests and clerical-looking gentlemen mounted the long
flight of steps that led to a spacious first floor, lighted by large,
high windows surmounted by grotesque heads. There the long-bearded
missionaries came to purchase their cargoes of glass beads or imitation
coral rosaries, before embarking for the East, or the Gaboon, to convert
the negroes and the Chinese.

The member of the third estate, draped in a long chocolate-colored,
straight frock-coat, holding a gigantic umbrella under his arm, procured,
dirt cheap and by the thousand, pamphlets of religious tenets. The
country curate, visiting Paris, arranged for the immediate delivery of a
remonstrance, in electrotype, Byzantine style, signing a series of
long-dated bills, contracting, by zeal supplemented by some ready cash,
to fulfil his liabilities, through the generosity of the faithful ones.

There, likewise, a young director of consciences came to look for some
devotional work--for example, the 12mo entitled "Widows' Tears Wiped
Away," by St. Francois de Sales--for some penitent. The representative
from some deputation from a devoutly Catholic district would solicit a
reduction upon a purchase of the "Twelve Stations of the Cross,"
hideously daubed, which he proposed to present to the parishes which his
adversaries had accused of being V