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She had assisted him so long with his accounts that his methods were quite familiar to her; all she needed was some one to handle the rough goods, and stand between her and the rude sailors with whom the business was mainly conducted. Who was this to be? Ragon Torr? She was sure Ragon would have been her father's choice.
Ragon lived in the Rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice, on the second floor of a dignified old house, in an appartement decorated with large panels where painted shepherdesses danced in panniers, before whom fed the sheep of our nineteenth century, the sober and serious bourgeoisie, whose comical demeanor, with their respectful notions about the nobility, and their devotion to the Sovereign and the Church, were all admirably represented by Ragon himself.
When Monsieur Ragon saw that Cesar was well-disposed on this point, he made him head-clerk and initiated him into the secrets of "The Queen of Roses," several of whose customers were the most active and devoted emissaries of the Bourbons, and where the correspondence between Paris and the West secretly went on.
When at home, Madame Ragon completed her natural self with a little King Charles spaniel, which presented a surprisingly harmonious effect as it lay on the hard little sofa, rococo in shape, that assuredly never played the part assigned to the sofa of Crebillon. Thus their little dinners were much prized.
Towards morning Ragon had managed to see Sandy and send him out to her with such a message as insured her rapid disappearance. Sandy had also with him a sum of money which he promised to use in transporting himself at once to India, where he had a cousin in the forty-second Highland regiment.
Madame Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting parties to listen to the deeds read over to them by Alexandre Crottat.
"He thought it superb sixteen years ago," murmured Constance. " among workmen and rubbish." "Bah! you will find him a good fellow, with no pretension," said Roguin. "I have put Raguet on guard in the shop. We can't go through our own door; everything is pulled down." "Why did you not bring your nephew?" said Pillerault to Madame Ragon. "Shall we not see him?" asked Cesarine.
The dignified citoyenne Ragon herself looked after his linen, and the two shopkeepers became familiar with him.
"And yet I have warned you many times," cried Ragon; "a drowning man will catch at his father's leg to save himself, and drown him too. I have seen so many failures! People are not exactly scoundrels when the disaster begins, but they soon come to be, out of sheer necessity." "That's true," said Pillerault.
One of the most learned and illustrious of French Masonic writers, Jean-Marie Ragon, describes such androgyne or female lodges as "amiable institutions" invented by an unknown person some time previously to the year 1730, under the name of "mysterious amusements," which appears to describe them exactly, and one cannot be otherwise than astonished at the extraordinary gravity of nervous and well-intentioned persons who ascribe them such tremendous importance.
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