"Assured that all that concerns my welfare will naturally possess for you the deepest interest, I hasten to inform you that jointly with my partner, M. Felix Basselôt, I have entered into a scheme to facilitate the manufacture of our woolen cloths and other textile fabrics by the purchase and installation of the most recently invented machines. Raw cloths are now subjected to perching, knotting, milling, washing, hydro-extracting, gigging, cutting, cropping, boiling, brushing and steaming processes of the latest invention, and we claim that the output of our manufactory will henceforth vie with the first qualities of goods advertised by the leading firms of Belgium, England and France.
"My mother's letters palpitate with your praises. What happiness, Mademoiselle, awaits the man who shall be privileged to confer upon such beauty, goodness, and amiability, the sacred name of wife. You will be interested to hear that for Saxonies, tweeds, merinos, and cashmeres for ladies' drapery our house maintains its old reputation, as well as for the heavier fabrics of masculine wear.
"Were I now at your side, how enchanting it would be to confide to you that we have struck out a bold and original line in dress-stuffs, dyed with the new agent called Aniline. It is extracted from coal-tar, and the magenta so much admired by our Parisian mondaines is obtained from it, by treating the crude substances with the chloride of tin. From magenta we derive rosaniline, a dye as delicate yet as passionate as a lover's fondest wishes. In an experiment recently made in my presence I beheld a pure young girl immerse in a solution of this extraction containing a little ammonia, a spotless lily, when instantly the virginal blossom's whiteness was changed to the loveliest roseate hue.
"Thus, dear Mademoiselle, your soul, so chaste, so spotless, and so innocent, being plunged in the consecrated vat of marriage, will assume the glowing hue of Love. Bleu de Lyons with Violet Imperial, all the most fashionable shades of mauve and other colors can be obtained by methods equally simple, and with the addition of aldehyde and sulphuric acid, we secure a green of the most brilliant, and a yellow that enchains the eye. By a simple process these colors may be fortified to stand the test of washing, as firmly and unchangeably as the affection I am privileged to offer you; which is hallowed by the blessing of the best of mothers, and of a father noble as your own.
"Receive then, dear Mademoiselle, the tenderest assurances of devotion,
"From yours eternally,
"CHARLES JOSEPH TESSIER."
Over this epistle, apparently begotten between a trade-circular and a polite letter-writer, Juliette had wept helpless tears of mirth. Reading it, one may conjure up a picture of the excellent Charles, spurred by the maternal threat of partial disinheritance to a desperate effort, bending over the paper in the throes of composition, diluting the ink with the sweat of a non-intellectual brow.
Also, one may suspect the anonymous heroine of the experiment with the lily to have been none other than Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt, but the suspicion has not, to the present date, been verified.