All the
mirrors, tables, seats, shelves, and fittings of the Cafe de Normandie
had been sold, as might have been expected, before Remonencq took
possession of the shop as it stood, paying a yearly rent of six
hundred francs for the place, with a back shop, a kitchen, and a
single room above, where the head-waiter used to sleep, for the house
belonging to the Cafe de Normandie was let separately. Of the former
splendor of the cafe, nothing now remained save the plain light green
paper on the walls, and the strong iron bolts and bars of the
shop-front.
When Remonencq came hither in 1831, after the Revolution of July, he
began by displaying a selection of broken doorbells, cracked plates,
old iron, and the obsolete scales and weights abolished by a
Government which alone fails to carry out its own regulations, for
pence and half pence of the time of Louis XVI. are still in
circulation. After a time this Auvergnat, a match for five ordinary
Auvergnats, bought up old saucepans and kettles, old picture-frames,
old copper, and chipped china. Gradually, as the shop was emptied and
filled, the quality of the stock-in-trade improved, like Nicolet's
farces. Remonencq persisted in an unfailing and prodigiously
profitable martingale, a "system" which any philosophical idler may
study as he watches the increasing value of the stock kept by this
intelligent class of trader. Picture-frames and copper succeed to
tin-ware, argand lamps, and damaged crockery; china marks the next
transition; and after no long tarriance in the "omnium gatherum"
stage, the shop becomes a museum.
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