a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up
to me with open arms, exclaiming: "George!"

I embraced him, but I had not recognized him, and then I said, in
astonishment: "By Jove! You have not grown thin!"

And he replied with a laugh: "What did you expect? Good living, a good
table, and good nights! Eating and sleeping, that is my existence!"

I looked at him closely, trying to find the features I held so dear in
that broad face. His eyes alone had not altered, but I no longer saw
the same looks in them, and I said to myself: "If looks be the
reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head are not what they
used to be--those thoughts which I knew so well."

Yet his eyes were bright, full of pleasure and friendship, but they had
not that clear, intelligent expression which tells better than do words
the value of the mind. Suddenly he said to me:

"Here are my two eldest children." A girl of fourteen, who was almost a
woman, and a boy of thirteen, in the dress of a pupil from a lycee,
came forward in a hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low
voice: "Are they yours?"

"Of course they are," he replied laughing.

"How many have you?"

"Five! There are three more indoors."

He said that in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and
I felt profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt for this
vainglorious and simple reproducer of his species, who spent his nights
in his country house in uxorious pleasures.

I got into a carriage, which he drove himself, and we set off through
the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the
streets save a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there a
shopkeeper standing at his door took off his hat, and Simon returned
the salute and told me the man's name--no doubt to show me that he knew
all the inhabitants personally. The thought struck me that he was
thinking of becoming a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, that
dream of all who have buried themselves in the provinces.

We were soon out of the town; the carriage turned into a garden which
had some pretensions to a park, and stopped in front of a turreted
house, which tried to pass for a chateau.

"That is my den," Simon said, so that he might be complimented on it,
and I replied that it was delightful.

A lady appeared on the steps, dressed up for a visitor, her hair done
for a visitor, and with phrases ready prepared for a visitor. She