Good people, these Bayards; an honor to the drug trade. Their marriage
had united two houses which had been for a long time rivals; for Bayard
was the son of _The Silver Pill_, founded by his great-great-grandfather
in 1756 in the Rue Vieille du Temple, and had espoused the daughter of
the _Offering to Esculapius_, of the Rue des Lombards, an establishment
which dated from the First Empire, as was shown by the sign, copied from
the celebrated painting of Guérin. Honest people, excellent people--and
there are many more, like them, whatever folks may say, among the older
Paris houses, conservators of old traditions; going to the second tier,
on Sunday, at the opera comique, and ignorant of false weights and
measures. It was the curé of Blancs-Manteaux who had managed that
marriage with his confrère of Saint-Merry. The first had ministered at
the death-bed of the elder Bayard, and was dismayed to see a young man
of twenty-five all alone in a house so gloomy as that of _The Silver
Pill_, justly famed for its ipecac; and the second was anxious to
establish Mademoiselle Simonin, to whom he had administered her first
communion, and whose father was one of his most important parishioners,
old Simonin of the _Offering to Esculapius_, celebrated for its camphor.
The negotiations were successful; camphor and ipecac, two excellent
specialties, were united in the holy bonds of matrimony, there was a
dinner and ball at the Grand Véfour, and now for ten years, tranquilly
working every day, summer and winter, in her glass cage, Madame Bayard,
with her pale brown face and her plaited hair, had smitten the hearts of
all the young clerks of the quarter Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie.
And yet for a long time there had been a disappointment in that happy
household, a cloud in that bright sky. An heir was wanted, and it was
five years before little Leon came into the world. One can imagine with
what joy he was received. Now one day they might write over the door of
_The Silver Pill_ these words, "Bayard & Son." But as the infant arrived
at the time of a boom in isinglass, Madame Bayard, whose presence in the
shop was indispensable, could not think of nursing him. She even gave up
the idea of taking a nurse in the house, fearing for the new-born the
close air of that corner of old Paris, and contented herself with taking
every Sunday with her husband a little excursion to Argenteuil to see
her son with his nurse Voisin, who was overwhelmed with coffee, sugar,
soap, and other dainties. At the end of eighteen months Mother Voisin
brought back the baby in a magnificent state, and for two years a
child's nurse, chosen with great care, had taken the child out for his
airings in the square of the Tour Saint-Jacques, and had exhibited for
the admiration of her companion-nurses, the pouting lips, the high
color, and the dimpled back of the future druggist.
And now these good Bayards, learning of the death of Mother Voisin,
could not bear the thought that the little girl who had been nourished
at the same breast with their boy should be abandoned to public charity,
so they went to Argenteuil for Norine.
Poor little one! Since the fifteen days that her mother slept in the
cemetery she had been taken charge of by a cousin who kept a
billiard-saloon; and though she was not yet five years old, she had been
put to work washing the beer-glasses.
[Illustration]
The Bayards found her charming, with great eyes as blue as the summer
sun, and her thick blond tresses escaping from her ugly black bonnet.
Leon, who had been brought with his nurse, embraced his foster sister;
and the cousin, who that very morning had boxed the orphan's ears for
negligence in sweeping out the hall, appeared before the Parisians to be
as much touched as if parting with Norine was a heart-breaking affair.
The order for an ample breakfast restored his serenity.
It was a beautiful Sunday in June, and they were in the country--"an
occasion which should be improved," declared Bayard, "by taking the air;
shouldn't it, Mimi?"
And while pretty Madame Bayard, having pinned up her skirts, went out
with the children and the nurse to pick flowers in a neighboring field,
the druggist, who was less ambitious, treated the saloon-keeping cousin
to a glass of vermouth, seated at the billiard-table, which was covered
with dead flies. They breakfasted under a vineless arbor, which the hot
noonday sun riddled with its rays. But what of that? They were pleased
and contented all the same. Madame Bayard had hung her hat on the
lattice; and her husband, wearing a bargeman's straw helmet, which had
been lent to him by the saloon-keeper, cut up the duck in the best of
spirits. Little Leon and Norine, who had immediately become the best of
friends, emptied the salad-bowl of its cream-cheese. Then they all
romped in the grass, went boating on the stream, and, intoxicated with
the fresh country air, the indwellers of the city, coming from the close
Paris streets, pushed to its fullest extreme this idyl in the fashion of
Paul de Kock.
[Illustration]
For, yes; there was a moment, as they came back in the boat, in a
delicious sunset, when tinted clouds floated in a glowing sky, when
Madame Bayard--the serious Madame Bayard--whose frown turned to stone
the shop-boys of the druggist, sang the air called "To the Shores of
France," to the rhythmic fall of the oars, plied by her husband in his
shirt-sleeves. They dined in the arbor where they had breakfasted, but
the second repast was a shade less happy. The night-moths, which dashed
in to burn themselves at the candles, frightened the children; and
Madame Bayard was so tired that she could not even guess the simple
rebus on her dessert napkin.
Never mind; it has been a good day; and on their return in a first-class
carriage--this was not a time for petty economies--Madame Bayard, with
her head on her husband's shoulder, watching Leon and Norine, limp with
sleep on the lap of the nurse, half asleep herself, murmured to her
husband, in a happy voice:
"See, Ferdinand; we have done well to take the little one. She will be a
comrade for Leon. They will be like brother and sister."