That is he touched these mighty institutions at but one very small point—a point which, such as it was, he kept well in mind. When Pinnie replied to the stationer round the corner, after he had mentioned the “terms” on which he was prepared to receive applications from errand-boys, that, thank her stars, she hadn’t sunk so low as that—so low as to sell her darling into slavery for three shillings a week—he felt that she only gave more florid expression to his own sentiment. Of course if Hyacinth didn’t begin by carrying parcels he couldn’t hope to be promoted, through the more refined nimbleness of tying them up, to a position as accountant or manager; but both the fiddler and his friend—Miss Pynsent indeed only in the last resort—resigned themselves to the forfeiture of this prospect. Mr. Vetch saw clearly that a charming handicraft was a finer thing than a vulgar “business,” and one day after his acquaintance with Eustache Poupin had gone a considerable length he inquired of the fervid Frenchman if there were a chance of the lad’s obtaining a footing, under his own wing, in Mr. Crookenden’s workshop. There could be no better place for him to acquire a knowledge of the most elegant of the mechanical arts; and to be received into such an establishment and at the instance of such an artist would be a real start in life. M. Poupin meditated, and that evening confided his meditations to the companion who reduplicated all his thoughts and understood him better even than he understood himself. The pair had no children and had felt the deficiency; moreover they had heard from Mr. Vetch the dolorous tale of the boy’s entrance into life. He was one of the disinherited, one of the expropriated, one of the exceptionally interesting; and moreover he was one of themselves, a child, as it were, of the inexhaustible France, an offshoot of the sacred race. It is not the most authenticated point in this veracious history, but there is strong reason to believe that tears were shed that night, in Lisson Grove, over poor Hyacinth Robinson. In a day or two M. Poupin replied to the fiddler that he had now been several years in _le vieux_ “Crook’s” employ; that during that time he had done work for him which he would have had _bien du mal_ to get done by another, and had never asked for an indulgence, an allowance, a remission, an augmentation. It was time, if only for the dignity of the thing, he should ask for something, and he would make their little friend the subject of his demand. “_La société lui doit bien cela_,” he remarked afterwards, when, Mr. Crookenden proving dryly hospitable and the arrangement being formally complete, Mr. Vetch thanked him in his kindly, casual, bashful English way. He was paternal when Hyacinth began to occupy a place in the malodorous chambers in Soho; he took him in hand, made him a disciple, the recipient of a precious tradition, discovered in him a susceptibility to philosophic, to cosmic, as well as to technic truth.