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Updated: July 19, 2025
The bare supposition is flattery. My dear friend," he continued, soothingly, "I did not dream of such a thing. The fact is, Bonelle, though they call me a jovial, careless, rattling dog, I have a conscience; and, somehow, I have never felt quite easy about the way in which I became your successor down-stairs. It was rather sharp practice, I admit." Bonelle seemed to relent.
"Gone, my dear friend, gone." "And the gout that was creeping higher and higher every day," exclaimed Monsieur Ramin, in a voice of anguish. "It went lower and lower, till it disappeared altogether," composedly replied Bonelle. "And your asthma " "The asthma remains, but asthmatic people are proverbially long-lived. It is, I have been told, the only complaint that Methusalah was troubled with."
He had long coveted it, and had almost concluded an agreement with the actual owner, when Monsieur Bonelle unexpectedly stepped in at the eleventh hour, and by offering a trifle more secured the bargain. The rage and mortification of Monsieur Ramin were extreme.
"Well, Catharine," observed Monsieur Ramin to his old servant on the following morning, "How is that good Monsieur Bonelle getting on?" "I dare say you feel very uneasy about him," she replied with a sneer. Monsieur Ramin looked up and frowned.
He bore the treatment of his host with the meekest patience, and having first locked the door so as to make sure that Marguerite would not interrupt them, he watched Monsieur Bonelle attentively, and satisfied himself that the Excellent Opportunity he had been ardently longing for had arrived: "He is going fast," he thought; "and unless I settle the agreement to-night, and get it drawn up and signed to-morrow, it will be too late."
He was sitting in his gloomy parlor one fine morning in spring, breakfasting from a dark liquid honored with the name of onion soup, glancing at the newspaper, and keeping a vigilant look on the shop through the open door, when his old servant Catharine suddenly observed: "I suppose you know Monsieur Bonelle has come to live in the vacant apartment on the fourth floor?"
"The fact is, my good old friend, ready money is not my strong point just now. But if you wish very much to be relieved of the concern, what say you to a life annuity? I could manage that." Monsieur Bonelle gave a short, dry, church-yard cough, and looked as if his life were not worth an hour's purchase. "You think yourself immensely clever, I dare say," he said.
Her master was in the shop, when she returned in a few minutes, and delivered with evident satisfaction the following gracious message: "Monsieur Bonelle desires his compliments to you, and declines to state how he is; he will also thank you to attend to your own shop, and not to trouble yourself about his health." "How does he look?" asked Monsieur Ramin, with perfect composure.
Presently a sprightly gentleman, in buoyant health and spirits, wearing the form of Monsieur Bonelle, appeared. Ramin stood aghast. "Well, Ramin," gaily said the old man, "how are you getting on? Have you been tormenting the poor widow up stairs? Why, man, we must live and let live!" "Monsieur Bonelle," said the mercer, in a hollow tone; "may I ask where are your rheumatics?"
Monsieur Bonelle did not trouble himself with useless remonstrances, but when his annuity was refused, employed such good legal arguments, as the exasperated mercer could not possibly resist. Ten years have elapsed, and MM. Ramin and Bonelle still live on. For a house which would have been dear at fifty thousand francs, the draper has already handed over seventy thousand.
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