more health, and more
joy in the veins of the world.

Blaise, now the father of a little girl some ten months old, had been
residing at the Beauchene works since the previous winter. He occupied
the little pavilion where his mother had long previously given birth to
his brother Gervais. His wife Charlotte had conquered the Beauchenes by
her fair grace, her charming, bouquet-like freshness, to such a point,
indeed, that even Constance had desired to have her near her. The
truth was that Madame Desvignes had made adorable creatures of her
two daughters, Charlotte and Marthe. At the death of her husband, a
stockbroker's confidential clerk, who had died, leaving her at thirty
years of age in very indifferent circumstances, she had gathered her
scanty means together and withdrawn to Janville, her native place, where
she had entirely devoted herself to her daughters' education. Knowing
that they would be almost portionless, she had brought them up extremely
well, in the hope that this might help to find them husbands, and it so
chanced that she proved successful.

Affectionate intercourse sprang up between her and the Froments; the
children played together; and it was, indeed, from those first games
that came the love-romance which was to end in the marriage of Blaise
and Charlotte. By the time the latter reached her eighteenth birthday
and married, Marthe her sister, then fourteen years old, had become the
inseparable companion of Rose Froment, who was of the same age and as
pretty as herself, though dark instead of fair. Charlotte, who had
a more delicate, and perhaps a weaker, nature than her gay, sensible
sister, had become passionately fond of drawing and painting, which
she had learnt at first simply by way of accomplishment. She had ended,
however, by painting miniatures very prettily, and, as her mother
remarked, her proficiency might prove a resource to her in the event of
misfortune. Certainly there was some of the bourgeois respect and esteem
for a good education in the fairly cordial greeting which Constance
extended to Charlotte, who had painted a miniature portrait of her, a
good though a flattering likeness.

On the other hand, Blaise, who was endowed with the creative fire of the
Froments, ever striving, ever hard at work, became a valuable assistant
to Maurice as soon as a brief stay in Morange's office had made him
familiar with the business of the firm. Indeed it was Maurice who,
finding that his father