"A pretty husband you look like!--without a sou, and dreaming of going
into housekeeping! A nice mess I should make of it, by giving you my
daughter! It's no use your insisting. You know that when I have said
'No,' nothing under the sun can make me say 'Yes'!"
I ceased to make any further appeal. I knew my uncle--about as
headstrong an old fellow as could be found in a day's search. I
contented myself with giving vent to a deep sigh, and then went on with
the furbishing of a big, double-handed sword, rusty from point to hilt.
This memorable conversation took place, in fact, in the shop of my
maternal uncle, a well-known dealer in antiquities and _objets d'art_,
No. 53, Rue des Claquettes, at the sign of the "Maltese Cross"--a
perfect museum of curiosities.
The walls were hung with Marseilles and old Rouen china, facing ancient
cuirasses, sabres, and muskets, and picture frames; below these were
ranged old cabinets, coffers of all sorts, and statues of saints,
one-armed or one-legged for the most part and dilapidated as to their
gilding; then, here and there, in glass cases, hermetically closed and
locked, there were knick-knacks in infinite variety--lachrymatories,
tiny urns, rings, precious stones, fragments of marble, bracelets,
crosses, necklaces, medals, and miniature ivory statuettes, the yellow
tints of which, in the sun, took momentarily a flesh-like transparency.
Time out of mind the shop had belonged to the Cornuberts. It passed
regularly from father to son, and my uncle--his neighbours said--could
not but be the possessor of a nice little fortune. Held in esteem by
all, a Municipal Councillor, impressed by the importance and gravity of
his office, short, fat, highly choleric and headstrong, but at bottom
not in the least degree an unkind sort of man--such was my uncle
Cornubert, my only living male relative, who, as soon as I left school,
had elevated me to the dignity of chief and only clerk and shopman of
the "Maltese Cross."
But my uncle was not only a dealer in antiquities and a Municipal
Councillor, he was yet more, and above all, the father of my cousin
Rose, with whom I was naturally in love.
To come back to the point at which I digressed.
Without paying any attention to the sighs which exhaled from my bosom
while scouring the rust from my long, two-handed sword, my uncle,
magnifying glass in hand, was engaged in the examination of a lot of
medals which he had purchased that morning. Suddenly he raised his head;
five o'clock was striking.
"The Council!" he cried.
When my uncle pronounced that august word, it made a mouthful; for a
pin, he would have saluted it bare-headed. But, this time, after a
moment's consideration, he tapped his forehead and added, in a tone of
supreme relief:--
"No, the sitting does not take place before to-morrow--and I am
forgetting that I have to go to the railway station to get the
consignment of which I was advised this morning."