his soup, and remained for five minutes in profound rumination, without
so much as perceiving two customers who had entered the shop and were
waiting to be served. When aroused, he was heard to exclaim:
“What an excellent opportunity!”
Monsieur Bonelle had been Ramin’s predecessor. The succession of the
latter to the shop was a mystery. No one ever knew how it was that this
young and poor assistant managed to replace his patron. Some said that
he had detected Monsieur Bonelle in frauds which he threatened to
expose, unless the business were given up to him as the price of his
silence; others averred that, having drawn a prize in the lottery, he
had resolved to set up a fierce opposition over the way, and that
Monsieur Bonelle, having obtained a hint of his intentions, had thought
it most prudent to accept the trifling sum his clerk offered, and avoid
a ruinous competition. Some charitable souls--moved no doubt by Monsieur
Bonelle’s misfortune--endeavored to console and pump him; but all they
could get from him was the bitter exclamation, “To think I should have
been duped by _him_!” For Ramin had the art, though then a mere youth,
to pass himself off on his master as an innocent provincial lad. Those
who sought an explanation from the new mercer, were still more
unsuccessful. “My good old master,” he said in his jovial way, “felt in
need of repose, and so I obligingly relieved him of all business and
botheration.”
Years passed away; Ramin prospered, and neither thought nor heard of his
“good old master.” The house, of which he tenanted the lower portion,
was offered for sale; he had long coveted it, and had almost concluded
an agreement with the actual owner, when Monsieur Bonelle unexpectedly
stepped in at the eleventh hour, and by offering a trifle more secured
the bargain. The rage and mortification of Monsieur Ramin were extreme.
He could not understand how Bonelle, whom he had thought ruined, had
scraped up so large a sum; his lease was out, and he now felt himself at
the mercy of the man he had so much injured. But either Monsieur Bonelle
was free from vindictive feelings, or those feelings did not blind him
to the expediency of keeping a good tenant; for though he raised the
rent, until Monsieur Ramin groaned inwardly, he did not refuse to renew
the lease. They had met at that period; but never since.
“Well, Catherine,” observed Monsieur Ramin to his old servant on the
following morning, “how is that good Monsieur Bonelle getting on?”
“I dare say you feel very uneasy about him,” she replied with a sneer.
Monsieur Ramin looked up and frowned.
“Catherine,” said he, dryly, “you will have the goodness, in the first
place, not to make impertinent remarks; in the second place, you will
oblige me by going up stairs to inquire after the health of Monsieur
Bonelle, and say that I sent you.”
Catherine grumbled and obeyed. Her master was in the shop, when she
returned in a few minutes, and delivered with evident satisfaction the
following gracious message:
“Monsieur Bonelle desires his compliments to you, and declines to state
how he is; he will also thank you to attend to your own shop, and not to
trouble yourself about his health.”
“How does he look?” asked Monsieur Ramin with the most perfect
composure.
“I caught a glimpse of him, and he appears to me to be rapidly preparing
for the good offices of the undertaker.”
Monsieur Ramin smiled, rubbed his hands, and joked merrily with a
dark-eyed grisette, who was cheapening some ribbon for her cap. That
girl made an excellent bargain that day.
Towards dusk the mercer left the shop to the care of his attendant, and
softly stole up to the fourth story. In answer to his gentle ring, a
little old woman opened the door, and giving him a rapid look, said
briefly,
“Monsieur is inexorable; he won’t see any doctor whatever.”
She was going to shut the door in his face, when Ramin quickly
interposed, under his breath, with, “_I_ am not a doctor.”
She looked at him from head to foot.
“Are you a lawyer?”
“Nothing of the sort, my good lady.”
“Well, then, are you a priest?”
“I may almost say, quite the reverse.”
“Indeed, you must go away; master sees no one.”
Once more she would have shut the door, but Ramin prevented her.
“My good lady,” said he, in his most insinuating tones, “it is true I am
neither a lawyer, a doctor, nor a priest. I am an old friend, a very old
friend of your excellent master; I have come to see good Monsieur
Bonelle in his present affliction.”
Marguerite did not answer, but allowed him to enter, and closed the door
behind him. He was going to pass from the narrow and gloomy ante-chamber
into an inner room--whence now proceeded a sound of loud coughing--when
the old woman laid her hand on his arm, and raising herself on tip-toe
to reach his ear, whispered:
“For Heaven’s sake, sir, since you are his friend, do talk to him; do
tell him to make his will, and hint something about a soul to be saved,
and all that sort of a thing: do, sir!”
Monsieur Ramin nodded and winked in a way that said “I will.” He proved,
however, his prudence by not speaking aloud, for a voice from within
sharply exclaimed,
“Marguerite, you are talking to some one. Marguerite, I will see neither
doctor nor lawyer; and if any meddling priest dare--”
“It is only an old friend, sir;” interrupted Marguerite, opening the
inner door.
Her master, on looking up, perceived the red face of Monsieur Ramin
peeping over the old woman’s shoulder, and irefully cried out,
“How dare you bring that fellow here? And you, sir, how dare you come?”
“My good old friend, there are feelings,” said Ramin, spreading his
fingers over the left pocket of his waistcoat,--“there are feelings,” he
repeated, “that cannot be subdued. One such feeling brought me here.
The fact is, I am a good-natured, easy fellow, and I never bear malice.
I never forget an old friend, but love to forget old differences when I
find one party in affliction.”
He drew a chair forward as he spoke, and composedly seated himself
opposite to his late master.
Monsieur Bonelle was a thin old man, with a pale sharp face, and keen
features. At first, he eyed his visitor from the depths of his vast
arm-chair; but, as if not satisfied with this distant view, he bent
forward, and laying both hands on his thin knees, he looked up into
Ramin’s face with a fixed and piercing gaze. He had not, however, the
power of disconcerting his guest.
“What did you come here for?” he at length asked.
“Merely to have the extreme satisfaction of seeing how you are, my good
old friend. Nothing more.”
“Well, look at me--and then go.”
Nothing could be so discouraging; but this was an Excellent Opportunity,
and when Monsieur Ramin _had_ an excellent opportunity in view, his
pertinacity was invincible. Being now resolved to stay, it was not in
Monsieur Bonelle’s power to banish him. At the same time, he had tact
enough to render his presence agreeable. He knew that his coarse and
boisterous wit had often delighted Monsieur Bonelle of old, and he now
exerted himself so successfully as to betray the old man two or three
times into hearty laughter.
“Ramin,” said he, at length, laying his thin hand on the arm of his
guest, and peering with his keen glance into the mercer’s purple face,
“you are a funny fellow, but I know you; you cannot make me believe you
have called just to see how I am, and to amuse me. Come, be candid for
once; what do you want?”
Ramin threw himself back in his chair, and laughed blandly, as much as
to say, “_Can_ you suspect me?”
“I have no shop now out of which you can wheedle me,” continued the old
man; “and surely you are not such a fool as to come to me for money.”
“Money?” repeated the draper, as if his host had mentioned something he
never dreamt of. “Oh no!”
Ramin saw it would not do to broach the subject he had really come
about, too abruptly, now that suspicion seemed so wide awake--_the_
opportunity had not arrived.
“There is something up, Ramin, I know; I see it in the twinkle of your
eye; but you can’t deceive me again.”
“Deceive _you_?” said the jolly schemer, shaking his head reverentially.
“Deceive a man of your penetration and depth? Impossible! The bare
supposition is flattery. My dear friend,” he continued, soothingly, “I
did not dream of such a thing. The fact is, Bonelle, though they call me
a jovial, careless, rattling dog, I have a conscience; and, somehow, I
have never felt quite easy about the way in which I became your
successor downstairs. It _was_ rather sharp practice, I admit.”
Bonelle seemed to relent.
“Now for it,” said the Opportunity-hunter to himself--“By-the-by,”
(speaking aloud,) “this house must be a great trouble to you in your
present weak state? Two of your lodgers have lately gone away without
paying--a great nuisance, especially to an invalid.”
“I tell you I’m as sound as a colt.”
“At all events, the whole concern must be a great bother to you. If I
were you, I would sell the house.”
“And if I were _you_,” returned the landlord, dryly, “I would buy it--”
“Precisely,” interrupted the tenant, eagerly.
“That is, if you could get it. Phoo! I knew you were after something.
Will you give eighty thousand francs for it?” abruptly asked Monsieur
Bonelle.
“Eighty thousand francs!” echoed Ramin. “Do you take me for Louis
Philippe or the Bank of France?”
“Then, we’ll say no more about it--are you not afraid of leaving your
shop so long?”
Ramin returned to the charge, heedless of the hint to depart. “The fact
is, my good old friend, ready money is not my strong point just now. But
if you wish very much to be relieved of the concern, what say you to a
life annuity? I could manage that.”
Monsieur Bonelle gave a short, dry, churchyard cough, and looked as if
his life were not worth an hour’s purchase. “You think yourself
immensely clever, I dare say,” he said. “They have persuaded you that I
am dying. Stuff! I shall bury you yet.”
The mercer glanced at the thin fragile frame, and exclaimed to himself,
“Deluded old gentleman!” “My dear Bonelle,” he continued, aloud, “I know
well the strength of your admirable constitution; but allow me to
observe that you neglect yourself too much. Now, suppose a good sensible
doctor--”
“Will you pay him?” interrogated Bonelle sharply.
“Most willingly,” replied Ramin, with an eagerness that made the old man
smile. “As to the annuity, since the subject annoys you, we will talk of
it some other time.”
“After you have heard the doctor’s report,” sneered Bonelle.
The mercer gave him a stealthy glance, which the old man’s keen look
immediately detected. Neither could repress a smile; these good souls
understood one another perfectly, and Ramin saw that this was not the
Excellent Opportunity he desired, and departed.
The next day Ramin sent a neighboring medical man, and heard it was his
opinion that if Bonelle held on for three months longer, it would be a
miracle. Delightful news!
Several days elapsed, and although very anxious, Ramin assumed a
careless air, and did not call upon his landlord, or take any notice of
him. At the end of the week old Marguerite entered the shop to make a
trifling purchase.
“And how are we getting on up-stairs?” negligently asked Monsieur Ramin.
“Worse and worse, my good Sir,” she sighed. “We have rheumatic pains,
which make us often use expressions the reverse of Christian-like, and
yet nothing can induce us to see either the lawyer or the priest; the
gout is getting nearer to our stomach every day, and still we go on
talking about the strength of our constitution. Oh, Sir, if you have any
influence with us, do, pray do, tell us how wicked it is to die without
making one’s will or confessing one’s sins.”
“I shall go up this very evening,” ambiguously replied Monsieur Ramin.
He kept his promise, and found Monsieur Bonelle in bed, groaning with
pain, and in the worst of tempers.
“What poisoning doctor did you send?” he asked, with an ireful glance;
“I want no doctor, I am not ill; I will not follow his prescription; he
forbade me to eat; I _will_ eat.”
“He is a very clever man,” said the visitor. “He told me that never in
the whole course of his experience has he met with what he called so
much ‘resisting power’ as exists in your frame. He asked me if you were
not of a long-lived race.”
“That is as people may judge,” replied Monsieur Bonelle. “All I can say
is, that my grandfather died at ninety, and my father at eighty-six.”
“The doctor owned that you had a wonderfully strong constitution.”
“Who said I hadn’t?” exclaimed the invalid feebly.
“You may rely on it, you would preserve your health better if you had
not the trouble of these vexatious lodgers. Have you thought about the
life annuity?” said Ramin as carelessly as he could, considering how
near the matter was to his hopes and wishes.
“Why, I have scruples,” returned Bonelle, coughing. “I do not wish to
take you in. My longevity would be the ruin of you.”
“To meet that difficulty,” quickly replied the mercer, “we can reduce
the interest.”
“But I must have high interest,” placidly returned Monsieur Bonelle.
Ramin, on hearing this, burst into a loud fit of laughter, called
Monsieur Bonelle a sly old fox, gave him a poke in the ribs, which made
the old man cough for five minutes, and then proposed that they should
talk it over some other day. The mercer left Monsieur Bonelle in the act
of protesting that he felt as strong as a man of forty.
Monsieur Ramin felt in no hurry to conclude the proposed agreement. “The
later one begins to pay, the better,” he said, as he descended the
stairs.
Days passed on, and the negotiation made no way. It struck the observant
tradesman that all was not right. Old Marguerite several times refused
to admit him, declaring her master was asleep; there was something
mysterious and forbidding in her manner that seemed to Monsieur Ramin
very ominous. At length a sudden thought occurred to him; the
housekeeper--wishing to become her master’s heir--had heard his scheme
and opposed it. On the very day that he arrived at this conclusion, he
met a lawyer, with whom he had formerly had some transactions, coming
down the staircase. The sight sent a chill through the mercer’s
commercial heart, and a presentiment--one of those presentiments that
seldom deceive--told him it was too late. He had, however, the fortitude
to abstain from visiting Monsieur Bonelle until evening came; when he
went up, resolved to see him in spite of all Marguerite might urge. The
door was half-open, and the old housekeeper stood talking on the landing
to a middle-aged man in a dark cassock.
“It is all over! The old witch has got the priests at him,” thought
Ramin, inwardly groaning at his own folly in allowing himself to be
forestalled.
“You cannot see Monsieur to-night,” sharply said Marguerite, as he
attempted to pass her.
“Alas! is my excellent friend so very ill?” asked Ramin, in a mournful
tone.
“Sir,” eagerly said the clergyman, catching him by the button of his
coat, “if you are indeed the friend of that unhappy man, do seek to
bring him into a more suitable frame of mind. I have seen many dying
men, but never so much obstinacy, never such infatuated belief in the
duration of life.”
“Then you think he really _is_ dying?” asked Ramin; and, in spite of the
melancholy accent he endeavored to assume, there was something so
peculiar in his tone, that the priest looked at him very fixedly as he
slowly replied,
“Yes, Sir, I think he is.”
“Ah!” was all Monsieur Ramin said; and as the clergyman had now relaxed
his hold of the button, Ramin passed in spite of the remonstrances of
Marguerite, who rushed after the priest. He found Monsieur Bonelle still
in bed in a towering rage.
“Oh! Ramin, my friend,” he groaned, “never take a housekeeper, and never
let her know you have any property. They are harpies, Ramin,--harpies!
such a day as I have had; first, the lawyer, who comes to write down ‘my
last testamentary dispositions,’ as he calls them; then the priest, who
gently hints that I am a dying man. Oh, what a day!”
“And _did_ you make your will, my excellent friend?” softly asked
Monsieur Ramin, with a keen look.
“Make my will?” indignantly exclaimed the old man; “make my will? what
do you mean, Sir? do you mean to say I am dying?”
“Heaven forbid!” piously ejaculated Ramin.
“Then why do you ask me if I have been making my will?” angrily resumed
the old man. He then began to be extremely abusive.
When money was in the way, Monsieur Ramin, though otherwise of a violent
temper, had the meekness of a lamb. He bore the treatment of his host
with the meekest patience, and having first locked the door so as to
make sure that Marguerite would not interrupt them, he watched Monsieur
Bonelle attentively, and satisfied himself that the Excellent
Opportunity he had been ardently longing for had arrived. “He is going
fast,” he thought; “and unless I settle the agreement to-night, and get
it drawn up and signed to-morrow, it will be too late.”
“My dear friend,” he at length said aloud, on perceiving that the old
gentleman had fairly exhausted himself and was lying panting on his
back, “you are indeed a lamentable instance of the lengths to which the
greedy lust of lucre will carry our poor human nature. It is really
distressing to see Marguerite, a faithful, attached servant, suddenly
converted into a tormenting harpy by the prospect of a legacy! Lawyers
and priests flock around you like birds of prey, drawn hither by the
scent of gold! Oh, the miseries of having delicate health combined with
a sound constitution and large property!”
“Ramin,” groaned the old man, looking inquiringly into his visitor’s
face, “you are again going to talk to me about that annuity--I know you
are!”
“My excellent friend, it is merely to deliver you from a painful
position.”
“I am sure, Ramin, you think in your soul I am dying,” whimpered
Monsieur Bonelle.
“Absurd, my dear Sir. Dying? I will prove to you that you have never
been in better health. In the first place you feel no pain.”
“Excepting from rheumatism,” groaned Monsieur Bonelle.
“Rheumatism! who ever died of rheumatism? and if that be all--”
“No, it is not all,” interrupted the old man with great irritability;
“what would you say to the gout getting higher and higher up every
day?”
“The gout is rather disagreeable, but if there is nothing else--”
“Yes, there is something else,” sharply said Monsieur Bonelle. “There is
an asthma that will scarcely let me breathe, and a racking pain in my
head that does not allow me a moment’s ease. But if you think I am
dying, Ramin, you are quite mistaken.”
“No doubt, my dear friend, no doubt; but in the meanwhile, suppose we
talk of this annuity. Shall we say one thousand francs a year.”
“What?” asked Bonelle, looking at him very fixedly.
“My dear friend, I mistook; I meant two thousand francs per annum,”
hurriedly rejoined Ramin.
Monsieur Bonelle closed his eyes, and appeared to fall into a gentle
slumber. The mercer coughed; the sick man never moved.
“Monsieur Bonelle.”
No reply.
“My excellent friend.”
Utter silence.
“Are you asleep?”
A long pause.
“Well, then, what do you say to three thousand?”
Monsieur Bonelle opened his eyes.
“Ramin,” said he, sententiously, “you are a fool; the house brings me in
four thousand as it is.”
This was quite false, and the mercer knew it; but he had his own reasons
for wishing to seem to believe it true.
“Good Heavens!” said he, with an air of great innocence, “who could have
thought it, and the lodgers constantly running away. Four thousand?
Well, then, you shall have four thousand.”
Monsieur Bonelle shut his eyes once more, and murmured “The mere
rental--nonsense!” He then folded his hands on his breast, and appeared
to compose himself to sleep.
“Oh, what a sharp man of business he is!” Ramin said, admiringly; but
for once omnipotent flattery failed in its effect; “So acute!” continued
he, with a stealthy glance at the old man, who remained perfectly
unmoved. “I see you will insist upon making it the other five hundred
francs.”
Monsieur Ramin said this as if five thousand five hundred francs had
already been mentioned, and was the very summit of Monsieur Bonelle’s
ambition. But the ruse failed in its effect; the sick man never so much
as stirred.
“But, my dear friend,” urged Monsieur Ramin in a tone of feeling
remonstrance, “there is such a thing as being too sharp, too acute. How
can you expect that I shall give you more when your constitution is so
good, and you are to be such a long liver?”
“Yes, but I may be carried off one of those days,” quietly observed the
old man, evidently wishing to turn the chance of his own death to
account.
“Indeed, and I hope so,” muttered the mercer, who was getting very
ill-tempered.
“You see,” soothingly continued Bonelle, “you are so good a man of
business, Ramin, that you will double the actual value of the house in
no time. I am a quiet, easy person, indifferent to money; otherwise this
house would now bring me in eight thousand at the very least.”
“Eight thousand!” indignantly exclaimed the mercer. “Monsieur Bonelle,
you have no conscience. Come now, my dear friend, do be reasonable. Six
thousand francs a-year (I don’t mind saying six) is really a very
handsome income for a man of your quiet habits. Come, be reasonable.”
But Monsieur Bonelle turned a deaf ear to reason, and closed his eyes
once more. What between opening and shutting them for the next quarter
of an hour, he at length induced Monsieur Ramin to offer him seven
thousand francs.
“Very well, Ramin, agreed,” he quietly said; “you have made an
unconscionable bargain.” To this succeeded a violent fit of coughing.
As Ramin unlocked the door to leave, he found old Marguerite, who had
been listening all the time, ready to assail him with a torrent of
whispered abuse for duping her “poor dear innocent old master into such
a bargain.” The mercer bore it all very patiently; he could make
allowances for her excited feelings, and only rubbed his hands and bade
her a jovial good evening.
The agreement was signed on the following day, to the indignation of old
Marguerite, and the mutual satisfaction of the parties concerned.
Every one admired the luck and shrewdness of Ramin, for the old man
every day was reported worse; and it was clear to all that the first
quarter of the annuity would never be paid. Marguerite, in her wrath,
told the story as a grievance to every one; people listened, shook their
heads, and pronounced Monsieur Ramin to be a deuced clever fellow.
A month elapsed. As Ramin was coming down one morning from the attics,
where he had been giving notice to a poor widow who had failed in paying
her rent, he heard a light step on the stairs. Presently a sprightly
gentleman, in buoyant health and spirits, wearing the form of Monsieur
Bonelle, appeared. Ramin stood aghast.
“Well, Ramin,” gaily said the old man, “how are you getting on? Have you
been tormenting the poor widow up stairs? Why, man, we must live and let
live!”
“Monsieur Bonelle,” said the mercer, in a hollow tone, “may I ask where
are your rheumatics?”
“Gone, my dear friend,--gone.”
“And the gout that was creeping higher and higher every day,” exclaimed
Monsieur Ramin, in a voice of anguish.
“It went lower and lower, till it disappeared altogether,” composedly
replied Bonelle.
“And your asthma----”
“The asthma remains, but asthmatic people are proverbially long-lived.
It is, I have been told, the only complaint that Methuselah was troubled
with.” With this, Bonelle opened his door, shut it, and disappeared.
Ramin was transfixed on the stairs; petrified with intense
disappointment, and a powerful sense of having been duped. When
discovered, he stared vacantly, and raved about an Excellent Opportunity
of taking his revenge.