mother, concluded the purchase from his patron, and as he had the bump
of what phrenologists term "acquisitiveness," his youthful ardor spent
itself upon this business, which he thought magnificent and desired to
increase by speculation.

The name of Phileas, which may seem peculiar, is only one of the many
oddities which we owe to the Revolution. Attached to the Simeuse
family, and consequently, good Catholics, the Beauvisage father and
mother desired to have their son baptized. The rector of Cinq-Cygne,
the Abbe Goujet, whom they consulted, advised them to give their son
for patron a saint whose Greek name might signify the municipality,
--for the child was born at a period when children were inscribed on
the civil registers under the fantastic names of the Republican
calendar.

In 1814, hosiery, a stable business with few risks in ordinary times,
was subject to all the variations in the price of cotton. This price
depended at that time on the triumph or the defeat of the Emperor
Napoleon, whose adversaries, the English generals, used to say in
Spain: "The town is taken; now get out your bales."

Pigoult, former patron of young Phileas, furnished the raw material to
his workmen, who were scattered all over the country. At the time when
he sold the business to Beauvisage junior, he possessed a large amount
of raw cotton bought at a high price, whereas Lisbon was sending
enormous quantities into the Empire at six sous the kilogramme, in
virtue of the Emperor's celebrated decree. The reaction produced in
France by the introduction of the Portuguese cotton caused the death
of Pigoult, Achille's father, and began the fortune of Phileas, who,
far from losing his head like his master, made his prices moderate by