but it was necessary to watch him very closely before
those sentiments could be detected. The canon's habitual condition
was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually lowered over his
orange-colored eyes, which could, however, give clear and piercing
glances when he liked. Reddish hair added to the gloomy effect of this
countenance, which was always obscured by the veil which deep meditation
drew across its features. Many persons at first sight thought him
absorbed in high and earnest ambitions; but those who claimed to know
him better denied that impression, insisting that he was only stupidly
dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or else worn out by too much
fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed. When it did so happen that
he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile would flicker on his lips and
lose itself in the wrinkles of his face.

Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansion, all frankness; he loved
good things and was amused by trifles with the simplicity of a man who
knew no spite or malice. The Abbe Troubert roused, at first sight, an
involuntary feeling of fear, while the vicar's presence brought a kindly
smile to the lips of all who looked at him. When the tall canon marched
with solemn step through the naves and cloisters of Saint-Gatien, his
head bowed, his eye stern, respect followed him; that bent face was in
harmony with the yellowing arches of the cathedral; the folds of his
cassock fell in monumental lines that were worthy of statuary. The good
vicar, on the contrary, perambulated about with no gravity at all. He
trotted and ambled and seemed at times to roll himself along. But with
all this there was one point of resemblance between the two men. For,
precisely as Troubert's ambitious air, which made him feared, had
contributed probably to keep him down to the insignificant position of
a mere canon, so the character and ways of Birotteau marked him out as
perpetually the vicar of the cathedral and nothing higher.

Yet the Abbe Troubert, now fifty years of age, had entirely removed,
partly by the circumspection of his conduct and the apparent lack of all
ambitions, and partly by his saintly life, the fears which his suspected
ability and his powerful presence had roused in the minds of his
superiors. His health having seriously failed him during the last
year, it seemed probable that he would soon be raised to the office of
vicar-general of the archbishopric. His competitors themselve