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Pichon père was a propriétaire as well; his property was that which is now in the possession of Giraudier, pharmacien, première classe, and which was destined to attain a sinister celebrity during his proprietorship.
The Giraudier of the present cherishes the particular superstition in question affectionately; it reminds him of an uncommonly good bargain made in his favor, which is always a pleasant association of ideas, especially to a Frenchman, still more especially to a Lyonnais; and it attracts strangers to his pharmacie, and leads to transactions in Grand Chartreuse and Créme de Roses, ensuing naturally on the narration of the history of Pichon & Sons.
Giraudier is not of aristocratic principles and sympathies; on the contrary, he has decided republican leanings, and considers Le Progrès a masterpiece of journalistic literature; but, as he says simply and strongly, “it is not because a man is a marquis that one is not to keep faith with him; a bad action is not good because it harms a good-for-nothing of a noble; the more when that good-for-nothing is no longer a noble, but pour rire.” At the easy price of acquiescence in these sentiments, the stranger hears one of the most authentic, best-remembered, most popular of the many traditions of the bad old times “before General Bonaparte,” as Giraudier, who has no sympathy with any later designation of le grand homme, calls the Emperor, whose statue one can perceive—a speck in the distance—from the threshold of the pharmacie.
Giraudier, pharmacien, has never seen these ghostly figures, but he describes them with much minuteness; and only the esprits forts of the Croix Rousse deny that the ghosts of Pichon & Sons are not yet laid. They were three. It was in the cheap night-service train from Paris to Calais that I first met them.
When better times come they returned, Prosper Alix an old man, and Berthe a stern, silent, handsome woman, with whom no one associated any notions of love or marriage. But long before their return the traditions of the Croix Rousse were enriched by circumstances which led to that before-mentioned capital bargain made by the father of the Giraudier of the present.
Giraudier is not only pharmacien but propriétaire, though not by inheritance; his possession of one of the prettiest and most prolific of the small vineyards in the beautiful suburb, and a charming inconvenient house, with low ceilings, liliputian bedrooms, and a profusion of persiennes, jalousies, and contrevents, comes by purchase.
Giraudier, pharmacien, première classe, is the legend, recorded in huge, ill-proportioned letters, which directs the attention of the stranger to the most prosperous-looking shop in the grand place of La Croix Rousse, a well-known suburb of the beautiful city of Lyons, which has its share of the shabby gentility and poor pretence common to the suburban commerce of great towns.
This enviable little terre was sold by the Nation, when that terrible abstraction transacted the public business of France; and it was bought very cheaply by the strong-minded father of the Giraudier of the present, who was not disturbed by the evil reputation which the place had gained, at a time the peasants of France, having been bullied into a renunciation of religion, eagerly cherished superstition.
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