ant days in our life! The nuts are bought, the
hydraulic press is ready to go to work, the land affair is settled.
Here, lock up that cheque on the Bank of France," he added, handing
her Pillerault's paper. "The improvements in the house are ordered, the
dignity of our appartement is about to be increased. Bless me! I saw,
down in the Cour Batave, a very singular man,"--and he told the tale of
Monsieur Molineux.

"I see," said his wife, interrupting him in the middle of a tirade,
"that you have gone in debt two hundred thousand francs."

"That is true, wife," said Cesar, with mock humility, "Good God, how
shall we pay them? It counts for nothing that the lands about the
Madeleine will some day become the finest quarter of Paris."

"Some day, Cesar!"

"Alas!" he said, going on with his joke, "my three eighths will only
be worth a million in six years. How shall I ever pay that two hundred
thousand francs?" said Cesar, with a gesture of alarm. "Well, we shall
be reduced to pay them with that," he added, pulling from his pocket a
nut, which he had taken from Madame Madou and carefully preserved.

He showed the nut between his fingers to Constance and Cesarine. His
wife was silent, but Cesarine, much puzzled, said to her father, as she
gave him his coffee, "What do you mean, papa,--are you joking?"

The perfumer, as well as the clerks, had detected during dinner the
glances which Popinot had cast at Cesarine, and he resolved to clear up
his suspicions.

"Well, my little daughter," he said, "this nut will revolutionize our
home. From this day forth there will be one person the less under my
roof."

Cesarine looked at her father with an eye which seemed to say, "What is
that to me?"

"Popinot is going away."

Though Cesar was a poor observer, and had, moreover, prepared his phrase
as much to herald the creation of the house of A. Popinot and Company,
as to set a trap for his daughter, yet his paternal tenderness made him
guess the confused feelings which rose in Cesarine's heart, blossomed
in roses on her cheek, suffused her forehead and even her eyes as she
lowered them. Cesar thought that words must have passed between Cesarine
and Popinot. He was mistaken; the two children comprehended each other,
like all timid lovers, without a word.

Some moralists hold that love is an involuntary passion, the most
disinterested, the least calculating, of all the passions, except
maternal love. This opinion carries with it