it is hard to imagine, as Cadette Saint-Avit said, what money M.
Hercules spent to procure all those bottles of different forms,
those furnaces and conjuring books wherewith he filled his castle.
But after the death of his brothers he became the richest gentleman
of his province, and while he dissipated his wealth in follies, his
good lands worked for him. Cadette Saint-Avit rates him, with all
his expenses, as still a very rich man."

These last words spoken, my father entered the shop. He embraced me
tenderly and confided to me that the house had lost half its
pleasantness in consequence of my departure and that of M. Jerome
Coignard, who was honest and jovial. He complimented me on my dress
and gave me a lesson in deportment, assuring me that trade had
accustomed him to easy manners by the continuous obligation he was
under to greet his customers like gentlemen, if as a fact they were
only vile riff-raff. He gave me, as a precept, to round off the
elbows and to turn my toes outward and counselled me, beyond this,
to go and see Leandre at the fair of Saint Germain and to adjust
myself exactly on him.

We dined together with a good appetite, and we parted shedding
floods of tears. I loved them well, both of them, and what
principally made me cry was that, after an absence of six weeks
only, they had already become somewhat strange to me. And I verily
believe that their sadness was caused by the same sentiment.




CHAPTER X