paper. Bixiou had the patience to work up the little masterpiece for
the sole purpose of hoaxing his superior.

The devil always puts a martyr near a Bixiou. Baudoyer's bureau held
the martyr, a poor copying-clerk twenty-two years of age, with a
salary of fifteen hundred francs, named Auguste-Jean-Francois
Minard. Minard had married for love the daughter of a porter, an
artificial-flower maker employed by Mademoiselle Godard. Zelie Lorrain,
a pupil, in the first place, of the Conservatoire, then by turns a
danseuse, a singer, and an actress, had thought of doing as so many of
the working-women do; but the fear of consequences kept her from vice.
She was floating undecidedly along, when Minard appeared upon the scene
with a definite proposal of marriage. Zelie earned five hundred francs
a year, Minard had fifteen hundred. Believing that they could live on
two thousand, they married without settlements, and started with the
utmost economy. They went to live, like dove-turtles, near the
barriere de Courcelles, in a little apartment at three hundred francs
a year, with white cotton curtains to the windows, a Scotch paper
costing fifteen sous a roll on the walls, brick floors well polished,
walnut furniture in the parlor, and a tiny kitchen that was very
clean. Zelie nursed her children herself when they came, cooked, made
her flowers, and kept the house. There was something very touching in
this happy and laborious mediocrity. Feeling that Minard truly loved
her, Zelie loved him. Love begets love,--it is the abyssus abyssum of
the Bible. The poor man left his bed in the morning before his wife
was up, that he might fetch provisions. He carried the flowers she had
finished, on his way to the bureau, and bought her materials on his
way back; then, while waiting for dinner, he stamped out her leaves,
trimmed the twigs, or rubbed her colors. Small, slim, and wiry, with
crisp red hair, eyes of a light yellow, a skin of dazzling fairness,