of
work. The greater part of his business was conducted by word of mouth,
and he seldom encountered difficulties. Like all thoughtful people he
was a great observer; he let people talk, and then studied them. He
often refused advantageous bargains on which his neighbors pounced;
later, when they regretted them, they declared that Pillerault had
"a nose for swindlers." He preferred small and certain gains to bold
strokes which put large sums of money in jeopardy. He dealt in cast-iron
chimney backs, gridirons, coarse fire-dogs, kettles and boilers in
cast or wrought iron, hoes, and all the agricultural implements of the
peasantry. This line, which was sufficiently unremunerative, required an
immense mechanical toil. The gains were not in proportion to the labor;
the profits on such heavy articles, difficult to move and expensive
to store, were small. He himself had nailed up many a case, packed and
unpacked many a bale, unloaded many a wagon. No fortune was ever more
nobly won, more legitimate or more honorable, than his. He had never
overcharged or sought to force a bargain. In his latter business days
he might be seen smoking his pipe before the door of his shop looking
at the passers-by, and watching his clerks as they worked. In 1814, the
period at which he retired from business, his fortune consisted, in the
first place, of seventy thousand francs, which he placed in the public
Funds, and from which he derived an income of five thousand and some odd
hundred francs a year; next of forty thousand francs, the value of his
business, which he had sold to one of his clerks; this sum was to be
paid in full at the end of five years, without interest. Engaged for
thirty years in a business which amounted to a hundred thousand francs
a year, he had made about seven per cent profit on the amount, and his
living had absorbed one half of that profit. Such was his record. His
neighbors, little envious of such mediocrity, praised his excellence
without understanding it.

At the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint-Honore is
the cafe David, where a few old merchants, like Pillerault, take their
coffee in the evenings. There, the adoption of the son of his cook had
been the subject of a few jests, such as might be addressed to a man
much respected, for the iron-monger inspired respectful esteem, though
he never sought it; his inward self-respect sufficed him. So when
he lost the young man, two hundred friends followed t