manner since exactley nine years and seven months and some days).  Alas! heavens!  I can’t help it in the least particles at all!  What, what shall I do, for ah! it is pitiful!  She loves me not at all, but, on the other hand, is (if I suspicion not wrongfully) wrapped up head and ears in devotion of one who does not love her, either, so cold and incapable of appreciation is he.  I allude to Honore Grandissime.

Ah! well do I remember the day when we returned—­he and me—­from the France.  She was there when we landed on that levee, she was among that throng of kindreds and domestiques, she shind like the evening star as she stood there (it was the first time I saw her, but she was known to him when at fifteen he left his home, but I resided not under my own white father’s roof—­not at all—­far from that).  She cried out “A la fin to vini!” and leap herself with both resplendant arm around his neck and kist him twice on the one cheek and the other, and her resplendant eyes shining with a so great beauty.

If you will give me a poudre d’amour such as I doubt not your great knowledge enable you to make of a power that cannot to be resist, while still at the same time of a harmless character toward the life or the health of such that I shall succeed in its use to gain the affections of that emperice of my soul, I hesitate not to give you such price as it may please you to nominate up as high as to $l,000—­nay, more.  Sir, will you do that?

     I have the honor to remain, sir,

     Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

     H. Grandissime.

Frowenfeld slowly transferred his gaze from the paper to his landlord’s face.  Dejection and hope struggled with each other in the gaze that was returned; but when Joseph said, with a countenance full of pity, “I have no power to help you,” the disappointed lover merely looked fixedly for a moment in the direction of the street, then lifted his hat toward his head, bowed, and departed.

CHAPTER XIX

ART AND COMMERCE

It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a short errand.  He was kept away somewhat longer than he had intended to stay, for, as they were coming out of the cathedral, he met Aurora and Clotilde.  Both the ladies greeted him with a cordiality which was almost inebriating, Aurora even extending her hand.  He stood but a moment, responding blushingly to two or three trivial questions from her; yet even in so short a time, and although Clotilde gave ear with the sweetest smiles and loveliest changes of countenance, he experienced a lively renewal of a conviction that this young lady was most unjustly harboring toward him a vague disrelish, if not a positive distrust.  That she had some mental reservation was certain.