"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:—