s hand.

Young Pigoult, a short, skinny man, whose eyes seemed to pierce the
green spectacles which could not modify the spitefulness of his glance,
well-informed as to all the interests of the neighborhood, owing his
aptitude in managing affairs to a certain facility of speech, passed
for what is called a _quizzer_, saying things plainly and with more
cleverness than the aborigines could put into their conversations. Still
a bachelor, he was awaiting a rich marriage through the offices of
his two protectors, Grevin and the Comte de Gondreville. Consequently,
barrister Giguet was not a little surprised on seeing Achille appear at
the meeting in company with Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage.

The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to
be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund
person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm
and lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further
brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a disposition
of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the word
"simpering" seems to have been created. Phileas Beauvisage was endowed
with so great a contentment with himself that he smiled on all the world
and under all circumstances. Those simpering lips smiled at a funeral.
The liveliness that abounded in his infantine blue eyes did not
contradict that perpetual and well-nigh intolerable smile.

This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence
and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his own,
remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness. He
always "had the honor"; to all his inquiries as to the health of absent
persons he added the adjectives "dear," "good," "excellent." He lavished
condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty miseries
and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of
commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and
a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word
"weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the
beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman
in the arrondissement.

When Severine heard of what she called her husband's "freak" as to
the election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame
Marion's:--

"It was well enough to give yourself an air of independence; but you