sible
gobbosity; the nose, crooked and out of shape like those of many
deformed persons, turned from right to left of the face instead of
dividing it down the middle. The mouth, contracted at the corners, like
that of a Sardinian, was always on the qui vive of irony. His hair, thin
and reddish, fell straight, and showed the skull in many places. His
hands, coarse and ill-joined at the wrists to arms that were far too
long, were quick-fingered and seldom clean. Goupil wore boots only fit
for the dust-heap, and raw silk stockings now of a russet black; his
coat and trousers, all black, and threadbare and greasy with dirt,
his pitiful waistcoat with half the button-moulds gone, an old silk
handkerchief which served as a cravat--in short, all his clothing
revealed the cynical poverty to which his passions had reduced him. This
combination of disreputable signs was guarded by a pair of eyes with
yellow circles round the pupils, like those of a goat, both lascivious
and cowardly. No one in Nemours was more feared nor, in a way, more
deferred to than Goupil. Strong in the claims made for him by his very
ugliness, he had the odious style of wit peculiar to men who allow
themselves all license, and he used it to gratify the bitterness of
his life-long envy. He wrote the satirical couplets sung during the
carnival, organized charivaris, and was himself a "little journal" of
the gossip of the town. Dionis, who was clever and insincere, and for
that reason timid, kept Goupil as much through fear as for his keen mind
and thorough knowledge of all the interests of the town. But the master
so distrusted his clerk that he himself kept the accounts, refused to
let him live in his house, held him at arm's length, and never confided
any secret or delicate affair to his keeping. In return the clerk fawned
upon the notary, hiding his resentment at this conduct, and watching
Madame Dionis in the hope that he might get his revenge there. Gifted
with a ready mind and quick comprehension he found work easy.

"You!" exclaimed the post master to the clerk, who stood rubbing his
hands, "making game of our misfortunes already?"

As Goupil was known to have pandered to Dionis' passions for the last
five years, the post master treated him cavalierly, without suspecting
the hoard of ill-feeling he was piling up in Goupil's heart with every
fresh insult. The clerk, convinced that money was more necessary to him
than it was to others, and knowing himse