Sylvie kept the books and did the writing. Jerome-Denis was master and
head-clerk both. In 1821, after five years' experience, competition
became so fierce that it was all the brother and sister could do to
carry on the business and maintain its reputation.
Though Sylvie was at this time scarcely forty, her natural ugliness,
combined with hard work and a certain crabbed look (caused as much by
the conformation of her features as by her cares), made her seem like
a woman of fifty. At thirty-eight Jerome Rogron presented to the eyes
of his customers the silliest face that ever looked over a counter.
His retreating forehead, flattened by fatigue, was marked by three
long wrinkles. His grizzled hair, cut close, expressed in some
indefinable way the stupidity of a cold-blooded animal. The glance of
his bluish eyes had neither flame nor thought in it. His round, flat
face excited no sympathy, nor even a laugh on the lips of those who
might be examining the varieties of the Parisian species; on the
contrary, it saddened them. He was, like his father, short and fat,
but his figure lacked the latter's brutal obesity, and showed,
instead, an almost ridiculous debility. His father's high color was
changed in him to the livid flabbiness peculiar to persons who live in
close back-shops, or in those railed cages called counting-rooms,
forever tying up bundles, receiving and making change, snarling at the
clerks, and repeating the same old speeches to customers.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41