in the Sauviats' eyes; so the day after he had spoken of
Veronique's marriage as a necessity, old Sauviat shaved him-
self, put on his Sunday clothes, and went out. He said not
a word to his wife and daughter, but the women knew that
the old man had gone out to find a son-in-law. Sauviat went
to M. Graslin.
M. Graslin, a rich banker of Limoges, had left his native
Auvergne like Sauviat himself, without a sou in his pocket.
He had begun life as a porter in a banker's service, and from
that position had made his way, like many another capitalist,
partly by thrift, partly by sheer luck. A cashier at five-and-
twenty, and at five-and-thirty a partner in the firm of Ferret
& Grossetete, he at last bought out the original partners, and
became sole owner of the bank. His two colleagues went to
live in the country, leaving their capital in his hands at a low
rate of interest. Pierre Graslin, at the age of forty-seven, was
believed to possess six hundred thousand francs at the least.
His reputation for riches had recently increased, and the
whole department had applauded his free-handedness when
he built a house for himself in the new quarter of the Place
des Arbres, which adds not a little to the appearance of
Limoges. It was a handsome house, on the plan of alignment,
with a f agade like a neighboring public building ; but though
20 THE COUNTRY PARSON
the mansion had been finished for six months, Pierre Graslin
hesitated to furnish it. His house had cost him so dear, that
at the thought of living in it he drew back. Self-love, it may
be, had enticed him to exceed the limits he had prudent!}
observed all his life long ; he thought, moreover, with the plain
sense of a man of business, that it was only right that the
inside of his house should be in keeping with the programme
adopted with the facade. The plate and furniture and acces-
sories needed for the house-keeping in such a mansion would
cost more, according to his computations, than the actual
outlay on the building. So, in spite of the town gossip, the
broad grins of commercial circles, and the charitable surmises
of his neighbors, Pierre Graslin stayed where he was on the
damp and dirty ground-floor dwelling in the Hue Montant-
manigne, where his fortune had been made, and the great
house stood empty. People might talk, but Graslin was
happy in the approbation of his two old sleeping partners,
who praised him for displaying such uncommon strength of
mind.
Such a fortune and such a life as Graslin's is sure to excite
plentiful covetousness in a country town. During the past
ten years more than one proposition of marriage had been
skilfully insinuated. But the estate of a bachelor was emi-
nently suited to a man who worked from morning to night,
overwhelmed with business, and wearied by his daily round,
a man as keen after money as a sportsman after game; so
Graslin had fallen into none of the snares set for him by
ambitious mothers who coveted a brilliant position for their
daughters. Graslin, the Sauviat of a somewhat higher social
sphere, did not spend two francs a day upon himself, and
dressed no better than his second clerk. His whole staff
consisted of a couple of clerks and an office-boy, though he
went through an amount of business which might fairly be
called immense, so multitudinous were its ramifications. One
of the clerks saw to the correspondence, the other kept the
books ; and for the rest Pierre Graslin was both the soul and
body of his business. He chose his clerks from his family
THE COUNTRY PARSON 21
circle; they were of his own stamp, trustworthy, intelligent,
and accustomed to work. As for the office-boy, he led the life
of a dray horse.
Graslin rose all the year round before five in the morning,
and was never in bed till eleven o'clock at night. His char-
woman, an old Auvergnate, who came in to do the housework
and to cook his meals, had strict orders never to exceed the
sum of three francs for the total daily expense of the house-
hold. The brown earthenware, the strong coarse tablecloths
and sheets, were in keeping with the manners and customs
of an establishment in which the porter was the man-of-all-
work, and the clerks made their own beds. The blackened
deal tables, the ragged straw-bottomed chairs with the holes
through the centre, the pigeon-hole writing-desks and ram-
shackle bedsteads, in fact, all the furniture of the counting-
house and the three rooms above it, would not have fetched
three thousand francs, even if the safe had been included, a
colossal solid iron structure built into the wall itself, before
which the porter nightly slept with a couple of dogs at his
feet. It had been a legacy from the old firm to the present
one.
Graslin was not often seen in society, where a great deal
was heard about him. He dined with the Eeceiver- General
(a business connection) two or three times a year, and he had
been known to take a meal at the prefecture ; for, to his own
intense disgust, he had been nominated a member of the
general council of the department. "He wasted his time
there," he said. Occasionally, when he had concluded a
bargain with a business acquaintance, he was detained to
lunch or dinner; and lastly, he was sometimes compelled to
call upon his old patrons who spent the winter in Limoges.
So slight was the hold which social relations had upon him,
that at twenty-five years of age Graslin had not so much
as offered a glass of water to any creature.
People used to say, "That is M. Graslin !" when he passed
along the street, which is to say, "There is a man who came
to Limoges without a farthing, and has made an immense
-3
22 THE COUNTRY PARSON
amount of money." The Auvergnat banker became a kind of
pattern and example held up by fathers of families to their
offspring and an epigram which more than one wife cast
in her husband's teeth. It is easy to imagine the motives
which induced this principal pivot in the financial machinery
of Limoges to repel the matrimonial advances rfo persever-
ingly made to him. The daughters of Messieurs Ferret and
Grossetete had been married before Graslin was in a position
to ask for them ; but as each of these ladies had daughters in
the schoolroom, people let Graslin alone at last, taking it for
granted that either old Ferret or Grossetete the shrewd had
arranged a match to be carried out some future day, when
Graslin should be bridegroom to one of the granddaughters.
Sauviat had watched his fellow-countryman's rise and
progress more closely than any one. He had known Graslin
ever since he came to Limoges, but their relative positions had
changed so much (in appearance at any rate) that the friend-
ship became an acquaintance, renewed only at long intervals.
Still, in his quality of fellow-countryman, Graslin was never
above having a chat with Sauviat in the Auvergne dialect
if the two happened to meet, and in their own language
they dropped the formal "you' ? for the more familiar "thee"
and "thou."
In 1823, when the youngest of the brothers Grossetete,
the Eeceiver-General of Bourges, married his daughter to the
youngest son of the Comte de Fontaine, Sauviat saw that the
Grossetetes had no mind to take Graslin into the family.
After a conference with the banker, old Sauviat returned
in high glee to dine in his daughter's room.
"Veronique will be Madame Graslin," he told the two
women.
"Madame Graslin!" cried Mother Sauviat, in amazement.
"Is it possible?" asked Veronique. She did not know Gras-
lin by sight, but the name produced much such an effect on
her imagination as the word Rothschild upon a Parisian shop-
girl.
"Yes. It is settled," old Sauviat continued solemnly.
THE COUNTRY PARSON 23
"Graslin will furnish his house very grandly; he will have
the finest carriage from Paris that money can buy for our
daughter, and the best pair of horses in Limousin. He will
buy an estate worth five hundred thousand francs for her,
and settle the house on her besides. In short, Veronique
will be the first lady in Limoges, and the richest in the de-
partment, and can do just as she likes with Graslin."
Veronique's boundless affection for her father and mother,
her bringing-up, her religious training, her utter ignorance,
prevented her from raising a single objection; it did not so
much as occur to her that she had been disposed of without
her own consent. The next day Sauviat set out for Paris,
and was away for about a week.
Pierre Graslin, as you may imagine, was no great talker;
he went straight to the point, and acted promptly. A thing
determined upon was a thing done at once. So in February
1822 a strange piece of news surprised Limoges like a sudden
thunder-clap. Graslin's great house was being handsomely
furnished. Heavy wagon-loads from Paris arrived daily
to be unpacked in the courtyard. Eumors flew about the
town concerning the good taste displayed in the beautiful fur-
niture, modern and antique. A magnificent service of plate
came down from Odiot's by the mail; and (actually) three
carriages ! a caleche, a brougham, and a cabriolet arrived
carefully packed in straw as if they had been jewels.
"M. Graslin is going to be married!" The words passed
from mouth to mouth, and in the course of a single evening
the news filtered through the drawing-rooms of the Limousin
aristocracy to the back parlors and shops in the suburbs, till
all Limoges in fact had heard it. But whom was he going
to marry? Nobody could answer the question. There was
a mystery in Limoges.
As soon as Sauviat came back from Paris, Graslin made
his first nocturnal visit, at half-past nine o'clock. Veronique
knew that he was coming. She wore her blue silk gown, cut
square at the throat, and a wide collar of cambric with a deep
hem. Her hair she had simply parted into two bandeaux,
24 THE COUNTR1 PARSON
waved and gathered, into a Grecian knot at the back of hei
head. She was sitting in a tapestry-covered chair near the
fireside, where her mother occupied a great armchair with
a carved back and crimson velvet cushions, a bit of salvage
from some ruined chateau. A blazing fire biirned on the
hearth. Upon the mantel-shelf, on either side of an old
clock (whose value the Sauviats certainly did not know),
stood two old-fashioned sconces; six wax-candles in the sock-
ets among the brazen vine-stems shed their light on the brown
chamber, and on Veronique in her bloom. The old mother
had put on her best dress.
In the midst of the silence that reigned in the streets at
that silent hour, with the dimly-lit staircase as a background,
Graslin appeared for the first time before Veronique the
shy childish girl whose head was still full of sweet fancies
of love derived from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's book. Gras-
lin was short and thin. His thick black hair stood up straight
on his forehead like bristles in a brush, in startling contrast
with a face red as a drunkard's, and covered with suppurating
or bleeding pustules. The eruption was neither scrofula nor
leprosy, it was simply a result of an overheated condition
of the blood; unflagging toil, anxiety, fanatical application
to business, late hours, a life steady and sober to the point
of abstemiousness, had induced a complaint which seemed
to be related to both diseases. In spite of partners, clerks,
and doctors, the banker had never brought himself to submit
to a regimen which might have alleviated the symptoms or
cured an evil, trifling at first, which was daily aggravated
by neglect as time went on. He wished to be rid of it, and
sometimes for a few days would take the baths and swallow
the doses prescribed; but the round of business carried him
away, and he forgot to take care of himself. Xow and again
he would talk of going away for a short holiday, and trying
the waters somewhere or other for a cure, but where is the
man in hot pursuit of millions who has been known to stop?
In this flushed countenance gleamed two gray eyes, the iris
speckled with brown dots and streaked with fine green
THE COUNTRY PARSON 25
threads radiating from the pupil two covetous eyes, piercing
eyes that went to the depths of the heart, implacable eyes in
which you read resolution and integrity and business faculty.
A snub nose, thick blubber lips, a prominent rounded fore-
head, grinning cheek-bones, coarse ears corroded by the sour
humors of the blood altogether Graslin looked like an an-
tique satyr a satyr tricked out in a great coat, a black satin
waistcoat, and a white neckcloth knotted about his neck. The
strong muscular shoulders, which had once carried heavy
burdens, stooped somewhat already; the thin legs, which
seemed to be imperfectly jointed with the short thighs, trem-
bled beneath the weight of that over-developed torso. The
bony fingers covered with hair were like claws, as is often the
case with those who tell gold all day long. Two parallel lines
furrowed the face from the cheek-bones to the mouth, an un-
erring sign that here was a man whose whole soul was taken up
with material interests ; while the eyebrows sloped up towards
the temples in a manner which indicated a habit of swift
decision. Grim and hard though the mouth looked, there was
something there that suggested an underlying kindliness, real
good-heartedness, not called forth in a life of money-getting,
and choked, it may be, by cares of this world, but which
might revive at contact with a woman.
At sight of this apparition, something clutched cruelly at
Veronique's heart. Everything grew dark before her eyes.
She thought she cried out, but in reality she sat still, mute,
staring with fixed eyes.
"Veronique," said old Sauviat, "this is M. Graslin."
Veronique rose to her feet and bowed, then she sank down
into her chair again, and her eyes sought her mother. But
La Sauviat was smiling at the millionaire, looking so happy,
so very happy, that the poor child gathered courage to hide
her violent feeling of repulsion and the shock she had re-
ceived. In the midst of the conversation which followed,
something was said about Graslin's health. The bankei-
looked naively at himself in the beveled mirror framed in
ebony.
26 THE COUNTRY PARSON
"I am not handsome, mademoiselle," he said, as he ex-
plained that the redness of his face was due to his busy life,
and told them how he had disobeyed his doctor's orders. He
hoped that as soon as he had a woman to look after him and
his household, a- wife who would take more care of him than
he took of himself, he should look quite a different man.
"As if anybody married a man for his looks, mate !" cried
the dealer in old iron, slapping his fellow-countryman on
the thigh.
Graslin's explanation appealed to instinctive feelings which
more or less fill every woman's heart. Veronique bethought
herself of her own face, marred by a hideous disease, and in
her Christian humility she thought better of her first impres-
sion. Just then some one whistled on the street outside,
Graslin went down, followed by Sauviat, who felt uneasy.
Both men soon returned. The porter had brought the first
bouquet of flowers, which had been in readiness for the occa-
sion. At the reappearance of the banker with this stack of
exotic blossoms, which he offered to his future bride, Vero-
nique's feelings were very different from those with which
she had first seen Graslin himself. The room was filled with
the sweet scent, for Veronique it was the realization of her
day-dreams of the tropics. She had never seen white camellias
before, had never known the scent of the Alpine cytisus, the
exquisite fragrance of the citronella, the jessamine of the
Azores, the verbena and musk-rose, and their sweetness, like
a melody in perfume, falling on her senses stirred a vague
tenderness in her heart.
Graslin left Veronique under the spell of that emotion;
but almost nightly after Sauviat returned home, the banker
waited till all Limoges was asleep, and then slunk along under
the walls to the house where the dealer in old iron lived. He
used to tap softly on the shutters, the dog did not bark, the
old man came down and opened the door to his fellow-coun-
tryinan, and Graslin would spend a couple of hours in the
brown ^oom where Veronique sat, and Mother Sauviat would
serve him up an Auvergnat supper. The uncouth lover never
THE COUNTRY PARSON 27
came without a bouquet for Veronique, rare flowers only to
be procured in M. Grossetete's hothouse, M. Grossetete being
the only person in Limoges in the secret of the marriage. The
porter went after dark to fetch the bouquet, which old Grosse-
tete always gathered himself.
During those two months, Graslin went about fifty times to
the house, and never without some handsome present, rings,
a gold watch, a chain, a dressing-case, or the like; amazing
lavishness on his part, which, however, is easily explained.
Veronique would bring him almost the whole of her father's
fortune she would have seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs. The old man kept for himself an income of eight
thousand francs, an old investment in the Funds, made when
he was in imminent danger of losing his head on the scaffold.
In those days he had put sixty thousand francs in assignats
(the half of his fortune) into Government stock. It was
Brezac who had advised the investment, and dissuaded him
afterwards when he thought of selling out; it was Brezac,
too, who in the same emergency had been a faithful trustee
for the rest of his fortune the vast sum of seven hundred
gold louis, with which Sauviat began to speculate as scon as
he made good his escape from prison. In thirty years' time
each of those gold louis had been transmuted into a bill for a
thousand francs, thanks partly to the .interest on the as-
signats, partly to the money which fell in at the time of Cham-
pagnac's death, partly to trading gains in the business, and
to the money standing at compound interest in Brezac's con-
cern. Brezac had done honestly by Sauviat, as Auvergnat
does by Auvergnat. And so whenever Sauviat went to take
a look at the front of Graslin's great house :
"Veronique shall live in that palace !" he said to himself.
He knew that there was not another girl in Limousin who
would have seven hundred and fifty thousand francs paid
down on her marriage day ; beside two hundred and fifty thou-
sand of expectations. Graslin, the son-in-law of his choice,
must therefore inevitably marry Veronique. So every evening
Veronique received a bouquet, which daily made her little
28 THE COUNTRY PARSON
sitting-room bright with flowers, a bouquet care fully kept out
of sight of the neighbors. She admired the beautiful jewels,
the rubies, pearls, and diamonds, the bracelets, dear to all
daughters of Eve, and thought "herself less ugly thus adorned.
She saw her mother happy over this marriage, and she herself
had no standard of comparison; she had no idea what mar-
riage meant, no conception of its duties; and finally, she
heard the curate of Sairt-Eticnne praising Graslin to her,
in his solemn voice, telling her that this was an honorable
man with whom she would lead an honorable life. So Vero-
nique consented to receive M. Graslin's attentions. In a
lonely and monotonous life like hers, let a single person pre-
sent himself day by day, and before long that person will not
be indifferent; for either an aversion, confirmed by a deeper
knowledge, will turn to hate, and the visitor's presence will
be intolerable; or custom stales (so to speak) the sight of
physical defects, and then the mind begins to look for com-
pensations. Curiosity busies itself with the face ; from some
cause or other the features light up, there is some fleeting
gleam of beauty there ; and at last the nature, hidden beneath
the outward form, is discovered. In short, first impressions
once overcome, the force with which the one soul is attracted
to the other is but so much the stronger, because the discovery
of the true nature of the other is all its own. So love begins.
Herein lies the secret of the passionate love which beautiful
persons entertain for others who are not beautiful in appear
ance; affection, looking deeper than the outward form, sees
the form no longer, but a soul, and thenceforward knows
nothing else. Moreover, the beauty so necessary in a woman
takes in a man such a strange character, that women's
opinions differ as much on the subject of a man's good looks
as men about the beauty of a woman.
After much meditation and many struggles with herself,
Veronique allowed the banns to be published, and all Limoges
rang with the incredible news. Nobody knew the secret the
bride's immense dowry. If that had been bruited abroad.
Veronique might have chosen her husband, but perhaps even
THE COUNTRY PARSON 29
so would have been mistaken. It was a love-match on Gras-
lin's side, people averred.
Upholsterers arrived from Paris to furnish the fine house.
The banker was going to great expense over it, and nothing
else was talked of in Limoges. People discussed the price
of the chandeliers, the gilding of the drawing-room, the
mythical subjects of the timepieces; and there were well-
informed folk who could describe the flower-stands and the
porcelain stoves, the luxurious novel contrivances. For in-
stance, there was an aviary built above the ice-house in the
garden of the Hotel Graslin; all Limoges marveled at the
rare birds in it the paroquets, and Chinese pheasants, and
strange water-fowl, there was no one who had not seen them.
M. and Mme. Grossetete, old people much looked up to in
Limoges, called several times upon the Sauviats, Graslin ac-
companying them. Mme. Grossetete, worthy woman, con-
gratulated Veronique on the fortunate marriage she was to
make; so the Church, the family, and the world, together
with every trifling circumstance, combined to bring this match
about.
In the month of April, formal invitations were sent to all
Graslin's circle of acquaintance. At eleven o'clock one fine
sunny morning a caleche and a brougham, drawn by Limousin
horses in English harness (old Grossetete had superintended
his colleague's stable), arrived before the poor little shop
where the dealer in old iron lived; and the excited quarter
beheld the bridegroom's sometime partners and his two clerks.
There was a prodigious sensation, the street was filled by the
crowd eager to see the Sauviats' daughter. The most cele-
brated hairdresser in Limoges had set the bride's crown on
her beautiful hair and arranged her veil of priceless Brussels
lace; but Veronique's dress was of simple white muslin. A
sufficiently imposing assembly of the most distinguished wo-
men of Limoges was present at the wedding in the cathedral ;
the Bishop himself, knowing the piety of the Sauviats, con-
descended to perform the marriage ceremony. People thought
the bride a plain-looking girl. For the first time she entered
30 THE COUNTRY PARSON
her hotel, and went from surprise to surprise. A state dinner
preceded the ball, to which Graslin had invited almost all
Limoges. The dinner given to the Bishop, the prefect, the
president of the court of first instance, the public prosecutor,
the mayor, the general, and to Graslin's sometime employers
and their wives, was a triumph for the bride, who, like all
simple and unaffected people, proved unexpectedly charming.
None of the married people would dance, so that Veronique
continued to do the honors of her house, and won the esteem
and good graces of most of her new acquaintances ; asking old
Grossetete, who had taken a great kindness for her, for infor-
mation about her guests, and so avoiding blunders. During
the evening the two retired bankers spread the news of the
fortune, immense for Limousin, which the parents of the
bride had given her. At nine o'clock the dealer in old iron
went home to bed, leaving his wife to preside at the ceremony
of undressing the bride. It was said in the town that Mme.
Graslin was plain but well shaped.
Old Sauviat sold his business and his house in the town,
and bought a cottage on the left bank of the Vienne, between
Limoges and Le Cluzeau, and ten minutes' walk from the
Faubourg Saint-Martial. Here he meant that he and his
wife should end their days in peace. The two old people had
rooms in Graslin's hotel, and dined there once or twice a
week with their daughter, whose walks usually took the direc-
tion of their house.
The retired dealer in old iron had nothing to do, and nearly
died of leisure. Luckily for him, his son-in-law found him
gome occupation. In 1823 the banker found himself with a
porcelain factory on his hands. He had lent large sums to the
manufacturers, which they were unable to repay, so he had