With his exceptional capacities he was not long in giving to the house a new impulse.

He perfected the machinery, and triumphantly defied all competition.

All this was a happy dream in which Pierre was to her a real son; her home became his, and she monopolized him completely.

But suddenly a shadow came o'er the spirit of her dreams.

Pierre's mother, the little haberdasher, proud of her son, would she consent to give him up to a stranger?
Oh! if Pierre had only been an orphan! But one could not rob a mother of her son! And Madame Desvarennes stopped the flight of her imagination.