"Why, thanks to this worthy saint, I, like most of my fellow workmen here, have had lucrative employment for the last five years, and we all owe this good fortune to the original of this portrait, M. Saint-Ramon. Thanks to him, I have not been out of work for a single day, and my wages have not only been liberal enough to support us comfortably, but also to enable us to lay aside a snug little sum for a rainy day." "But it was not this worthy man whose portrait we see here that ordered and paid for all this work. It was M. de Saint-Herem, who is always so pleasant and kind, and who said so many nice things to us just now when we came in." "Of course, my dear Juliette, it was M. de Saint-Herem who employed us, but, as he always said to us when he came to see how we were getting on: 'Ah, boys, if it were not for the wealth I inherited from another person, I could not give you employment or pay you as such industrious and capable workmen ought to be paid, so always hold in grateful remembrance the memory of the person who left me all this money. He accumulated it, penny by penny, by depriving himself of every comfort, while I have the pleasure of spending his wealth. In fact, it is my bounden duty to spend it. What is the good of money, if it is not to be spent? So hold in grateful remembrance, I say, the memory of yonder good old miser. Bless his avarice, for it gives me the pleasure of accomplishing wonderful things, and you, liberal wages, richly earned.'" "Still, while we are, of course, under great obligations to this worthy miser, we ought to be equally grateful to M. de Saint-Herem, it seems to me. So many wealthy people spend little or nothing; or, if they do employ us, haggle about the price of our work, or keep us waiting a long time for our money." The venerable stranger listened to this conversation with quite as much interest as astonishment. He also lent an attentive ear to other conversations that were going on around him, and everywhere he heard a chorus of praises and benedictions lavished upon Saint-Ramon, while M. de Saint-Herem's nobility of soul and liberality were lauded to the skies. "Is all this a dream?" the old man said to himself. "Who would ever believe that these eulogiums and protestations of respect were addressed to the memory of a miser,--of a person belonging to a class of people that is almost universally despised and vilified? And it is the spendthrift heir of this miser who thus eulogises him! But what strange whim led him to invite all his workmen to his entertainment?" The astonishment of the old man increased as he began to note a strange contrast that was becoming apparent between the guests, for quite a number of correctly dressed and extremely distinguished-looking men--many with decorations in their buttonholes--were now moving about the spacious rooms with exquisitely dressed ladies on their arms.