M. ----'s wedding-day. He marries this
morning the Signorina G----, and I am sure you would not molest him
with business on such an occasion as that."
"But my fifty thousand dollars!" persisted the consignee, "and why
have they not been paid?"
"Oh, give yourself no uneasiness at all about that, Sir," replied
the clerk, with the air of one to whom the handling of such trifles
was a daily occurrence; "M. M. ---- will, of course, attend to that
matter the moment he is a little at leisure. In fact, I imagine, that,
in the hurry and bustle inseparable from an event of this nature,
the circumstance has entirely escaped his mind; but as soon as he
returns to business again, I will recall it to his recollection, and
you will hear from him without delay."
The clerk was right in his augury as to the effect his intelligence
would have upon the creditor. It was not a clerical error on his
part when he supposed that Mr. Schulemberg would not choose to enact
the part of skeleton at the wedding breakfast of the young _Prima
Donna_. There is something about the great events of life, which
cannot happen a great many times to anybody,--
"A wedding or a funeral,
A mourning or a festival,--"
that touches the strings of the one human heart of us all and makes
it return no uncertain sound. _Shylock_ himself would hardly have
demanded his pound of flesh on the wedding-day, had it been _Antonio_
that was to espouse the fair _Portia_.
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