You will meet with many an Atlas like him. The man’s torso was a huge block, a bull standing on his hind legs. Powerful arms terminated in thick, hard hands, broad and strong, apt at wielding the whip, the reins, and the pitchfork, hands which were no joke in the eyes of his postilions. The enormous stomach of this giant rested on legs as thick as the body of a full-grown man, and feet like an elephant’s. Rage was no doubt rare in this man, but when it broke out it would be terrible, apoplectic. Though he was violent and incapable of reflection, the man had done nothing to justify the sinister threats of his appearance. When anyone trembled before the giant, his postboys would say, “Oh, he is not a bad fellow!”
The “Master” of Nemours, to make use of an abbreviation common in many countries, wore a shooting jacket of bottle-green velveteen, trousers of striped green duck, and a vast yellow mohair waistcoat. In the waistcoat pocket an enormous snuffbox was evident, outlined by a black ring. That a snub nose argues a big snuffbox is a rule almost without exception.
Minoret-Levrault, as a son of the Revolution, and a spectator of the Empire, had never concerned himself with politics; as to his religious opinions, he had never set foot in a church but to be married; as to his principles in domestic life, they were contained in the Civil Code. He thought everything permissible that was not forbidden or indictable by law. He had never read anything but the local newspaper and some manuals relating to his business. He was regarded as a skilful agriculturist, but his knowledge was purely empirical.
In Minoret-Levrault, then, the mind did not give the lie to the body. He spoke rarely, and before delivering himself he always took a pinch of snuff to gain time to find, not ideas, but words. If he had been talkative, he would have seemed a failure.
When you think that this sort of elephant, without a trunk and without intelligence, was called Minoret-Levrault, must you not recognize, with Sterne, the occult power of names, which sometimes mask and sometimes label the character of their owners? In spite of these conspicuous disadvantages, in thirty-six years, the Revolution helping, he had made a fortune of thirty thousand francs a year, in meadow land, arable land, and woods.
Though Minoret, who had shares in the Nemours Messageries Company, and an interest in the Gatinais Company at Paris, was still hard at work, it was not so much from habit as for the sake of his only son, for whom he wished to prepare handsome prospects. This son, who, in the peasants’ phraseology, had become a gentleman, had just ended his studies for the law, and on the reopening of the courts was to be sworn as a qualified attorney. Monsieur and Madame Minoret-Levrault—for behind the colossus a woman is evident, a wife, without whom such a fortune would have been impossible—had left their son free to choose his career, as a notary at Paris, as public prosecutor in some country town, as receiver-general, stockbroker, or postmaster. What fancy might he not allow himself, to what profession might he not aspire, as the son of a man of whom it was said from Montargis to Essonne, “Father Minoret does not know how much he has”?
This idea had received fresh confirmation when, four years since, after selling his inn, Minoret built himself a splendid house and stables, and removed the posting business from the High Street to the riverside. The new buildings had cost two hundred thousand francs, which gossip doubled for thirty miles round. The posting-stage at Nemours required a great number of horses; it worked as far as Fontainebleau on the Paris side, and beyond the roads to Montargis and Montereau; the relays were long, and the sandy soil about Montargis justified the imaginary third horse, which is always paid for and never seen. A man of Minoret’s build, and of Minoret’s wealth, at the head of such a concern, might well be called without abuse of words the Master of Nemours. Though he never gave a thought to God or the Devil, and was a practical materialist—as he was a practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, a practical miser—Minoret had hitherto enjoyed unmixed happiness, if a merely material existence may be regarded as happy. On seeing the pad of flesh which covered the man’s top vertebrae and pressed on his occiput, and especially on hearing his shrill, thin voice, which contrasted ludicrously with his bull-neck, a physiologist would have understood at once why this great, coarse, burly countryman adored his only son, and perhaps why he had so long awaited his birth—as the name given to the child, Désiré, sufficiently indicated. In short, if love, as betraying a rich physical nature, is the promise of great things in a man, philosophers will understand the causes of Minoret’s failure.
His wife, whom the son happily resembled, vied with his father in spoiling the boy. No child’s nature could hold out against such idolatry. And, indeed, Désiré, who knew the extent of his power, was clever enough to draw on his mother’s savings-box and dip his hand in his father’s purse, making each of his fond parents believe that he had not applied to the other. Désiré, who played at Nemours a far more grateful part than that of a prince in his father’s capital, had indulged all his fancies at Paris just as he did in his little native town, and had spent more than twelve thousand francs a year. But then, for this money, he had acquired ideas which would never have come into his head at Nemours; he had cast his provincial skin, he had learned the power
