Monsieur Ramin heard Catharine with great attention, forgot to finish 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, Catharine,” 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.

“Catharine,” 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.”