which it is worth keeping a toad to see. * * * * * _The Helmet._ From the French by Ferdinand Beissier. [Illustration] "But, uncle--I love my cousin!" "Get out!" "Give her to me." "Don't bother me!" "It will be my death!" "Nonsense! you'll console yourself with some other girl." "Pray--" My uncle, whose back had been towards me, whirled round, his face red to bursting, and brought his closed fist down upon the counter with a heavy thump. "Never!" he cried; "never: Do you hear what I say?" And as I looked at him beseechingly and with joined hands, he went on:-- "A pretty husband you look like!--without a sou, and dreaming of going into housekeeping! A nice mess I should make of it, by giving you my daughter! It's no use your insisting. You know that when I have said 'No,' nothing under the sun can make me say 'Yes'!" I ceased to make any further appeal. I knew my uncle--about as headstrong an old fellow as could be found in a day's search. I contented myself with giving vent to a deep sigh, and then went on with the furbishing of a big, double-handed sword, rusty from point to hilt. This memorable conversation took place, in fact, in the shop of my maternal uncle, a well-known dealer in antiquities and _objets d'art_, No. 53, Rue des Claquettes, at the sign of the "Maltese Cross"--a perfect museum of curiosities. The walls were hung with Marseilles and old Rouen china, facing ancient cuirasses, sabres, and muskets, and picture frames; below these were ranged old cabinets, coffers of all sorts, and statues of saints, one-armed or one-legged for the most part and dilapidated as to their gilding; then, here and there, in glass cases, hermetically closed and locked, there were knick-knacks in infinite variety--lachrymatories, tiny urns, rings, precious stones, fragments of marble, bracelets, crosses, necklaces, medals, and miniature ivory statuettes, the yellow tints of which, in the sun, took momentarily a flesh-like transparency. Time out of mind the shop had belonged to the Cornuberts. It passed regularly from father to son, and my uncle--his neighbours said--could not but be the possessor of a nice little fortune. Held in esteem by all, a Municipal Councillor, impressed by the importance and gravity of his office, short, fat, highly choleric and headstrong, but at bottom not in the least degree an unkind sort of man--such was my uncle Cornubert, my only living male relative, who, as soon as I left school, had elevated me to the dignity of chief and only clerk and shopman of the "Maltese Cross." But my uncle was not only a dealer in antiquities and a Municipal Councillor, he was yet more, and above all, the father of my cousin Rose, with whom I was naturally in love. To come back to the point at which I digressed.