The elder Bongrand was a good deal like a retired brigadier; his was a face, not naturally pale, but washed out, where business, disappointment, and disgust had left their marks; it was wrinkled by much thought, and also by the pinched look of a man who is constantly forced not to say all he thinks; but it was often illuminated by the smiles peculiar to men, who, by turns, believe everything or believe nothing, who are accustomed to see and hear everything without surprise, to sound the depths which self-interest reveals at the bottom of men’s hearts. Under his hair, which was faded rather than gray, and brushed in smooth waves on his head, rose a sagacious brow, its yellow tint harmonizing with that of his thin locks. His face, being rather short, gave him some resemblance to a fox, all the more so because his nose was short and sharp. As he spoke, his wide mouth, like that of all great talkers, sputtered out a spray of white foam-stars, which made his conversation so showery, that Goupil used to say, maliciously: “You want an umbrella while you listen to him,” or, “The Justice of the peace rains decisions.”
His eyes seemed keen behind his spectacles, but if he took them off, his expression was dulled, and he looked stupid. Though lively, and even jovial, by his manner he gave himself rather too much the airs of a man of importance. His hands were almost always in his trousers pockets, and he only took them out to settle his spectacles on his nose with a sort of mocking gesture, preliminary to some acute remark or clinching argument. These movements, with his loquacity and his innocent pretentiousness, betrayed the country lawyer; but such slight defects were merely superficial; he made up for them by an acquired geniality, which an exact moralist might define as the indulgence inherent in superiority. And if he had somewhat the look of a fox, he was also supposed to be extremely wily, without being dishonest. His cunning was the exercise of perspicacity. Do we not call folks cunning who can foresee results, and avoid the snares laid for them? The lawyer was fond of whist, a game which the doctor and the captain played, and which the priest soon learned.
This little party created an oasis for themselves in Minoret’s drawing-room. The Nemours town doctor, who was not deficient in education or manners, and who respected Minoret as an ornament to the profession, was also admitted; but his business and fatigues, which compelled him to go to bed early that he might rise betimes, hindered him from being so regular a visitor as the doctor’s three friends were.
The meetings of these five superior men, who alone in all the town had enough general culture to understand each other, account for Minoret’s aversion for his heirs; though he might have to leave them his fortune, he could not admit them to his society. Whether the postmaster, the registrar, and the receiver understood this distinction, or were reassured by their uncle’s loyal nature and benefactions, they ceased at any rate to call on him, to his very great satisfaction.
The four old players of whist and backgammon had, within seven or eight months of the doctor’s settling at Nemours, formed a compact and exclusive little circle, which came to each of them as a sort of autumnal brotherhood, quite unlooked for, and therefore all the sweeter and more enjoyable. This family party of choice spirits found in Ursule a child whom each could adopt after his manner: the priest thought of her soul, the lawyer made himself her protector, the soldier promised himself that he would be her tutor; as for Minoret, he was father, mother, and doctor in one.
After acclimatizing himself, as it were, the old man fell into habits of life, regulated as it must be in all provincial towns. With Ursule as an excuse, he never received anyone in the morning, and asked nobody to dinner; his friends could join him at six o’clock, and remain with him till midnight. The first comers found newspapers on the drawing-room table, and read while waiting for the others, or sometimes went to meet the doctor if he were out walking. These quiet habits were not merely the requirements of old age; they were also a wise and deep-laid precaution on the part of a man of the world to prevent his happiness being troubled by the restless curiosity of his relations, or the petty gossip of a country town. He would concede nothing to the capricious goddess Public Opinion, whose tyranny—one of the curses of France—was about to be established, and to make our whole country one single province. So as soon as the little girl was weaned and could walk, he sent away the cook whom his niece, Madame Minoret-Levrault, had found for him, on discovering that she reported to the postmistress everything that went on in his house.
Little Ursule’s nurse, the widow of a poor laborer owning no name but that he was christened by, and who came from Bougival, had lost her last baby at the age of six months; and the doctor, knowing her to be an honest creature, engaged her as wet nurse, in pity for her destitution. Having no money,
