t of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed
the frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their
crumpled collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as soon
as they wound them about their throats. The enormous quantity of linen
which allowed these people to have their clothing washed only once
in six months, and to keep it during that time in the depths of their
closets, also enabled time to lay its grimy and decaying stains upon
it. There was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their
faces, as faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers,
were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the others, the
general negligence of their dress, which was incomplete and wanting
in freshness,--like the toilet of all country places, where insensibly
people cease to dress for others and come to think seriously of the
price of a pair of gloves,--was in keeping with the negligence of
the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was the only point on which the
Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed.

When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange
accessories of this dwelling,--the joists of the ceiling, the color
of the woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left there in
sufficient number to punctuate the "Moniteur" and the "Encyclopaedia of
Sciences,"--the loto-players lifted their noses and looked at him with
as much curiosity as they might have felt about a giraffe. Monsieur des
Grassins and his son, to whom the appearance of a man of fashion was not
wholly unknown, were nevertheless as much astonished as their neighbors,
whether it was that they fell under the indefinable influence of the
general feeling, or that they really shared it as with satirical glances
they seemed to say to their compatriots,--

"That is what you see in Paris!"

They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without fearing to
displease the master of the house. Grandet was absorbed in the long
letter which he held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the
only candle upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their
pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress
or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin
a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the
fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She
would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate g