on treacle, but
it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking for. Ah!
he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout specific,
you and I should be rolling along in our carriage this day."

The little druggist, whose head was as thick as his heart was kind,
never let a week pass without some allusion to Chardon senior's unlucky
secretiveness as to that discovery, words that Lucien felt like a stab.

"It is a great pity," Lucien answered curtly. He was beginning to think
his father's apprentice prodigiously vulgar, though he had blessed the
man for his kindness, for honest Postel had helped his master's widow
and children more than once.

"Why, what is the matter with you?" M. Postel inquired, putting down his
test tube on the laboratory table.

"Is there a letter for me?"

"Yes, a letter that smells like balm! it is lying on the corner near my
desk."

Mme. de Bargeton's letter lying among the physic bottles in a druggist's
shop! Lucien sprang in to rescue it.

"Be quick, Lucien! your dinner has been waiting an hour for you, it will
be cold!" a sweet voice called gently through a half-opened window; but
Lucien did not hear.

"That brother of yours has gone crazy, mademoiselle," said Postel,
lifting his face.

The old bachelor looked rather like a miniature brandy cask, embellished
by a painter's fancy, with a fat, ruddy countenance much pitted with the
smallpox; at the sight of Eve his face took a ceremonious and amiable
expression, which said plainly that he had thoughts of espousing the
daughter of his predecessor, but could not put an end to the strife
between love and interest in his heart. He often said to Lucien, with a
smile, "Your sister is uncommonly pretty, and you are not so bad looking
neither! Your father did everything well."

Eve was tall, dark-haired, dark of complexion, and blue-eyed; but
notwithstanding these signs of virile character, she was gentle,
tender-hearted, and devoted to those she loved. Her frank innocence,
her simplicity, her quiet acceptance of a hard-working life, her
character--for her life was above reproach--could not fail to win David
Sechard's heart. So, since the first time that these two had met, a
repressed and single-hearted love had grown up between them in the
German fashion, quietly, with no fervid protestations. In their secret
souls they thought of each other as if there were a bar between that
kept them apart; as if the thought w