ly
older by playing the part of Louis XII. His eyebrows were still black,
and left a ghostly reminiscence of Handsome Hulot, as sometimes on the
wall of some feudal building a faint trace of sculpture remains to show
what the castle was in the days of its glory. This discordant detail
made his eyes, still bright and youthful, all the more remarkable in his
tanned face, because it had so long been ruddy with the florid hues of
a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the
wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay.
Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts
itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as
moss grows on the almost eternal monuments of the Roman Empire.

How had Valerie contrived to keep Crevel and Hulot side by side, each
tied to an apron-string, when the vindictive Mayor only longed to
triumph openly over Hulot? Without immediately giving an answer to this
question, which the course of the story will supply, it may be said that
Lisbeth and Valerie had contrived a powerful piece of machinery which
tended to this result. Marneffe, as he saw his wife improved in beauty
by the setting in which she was enthroned, like the sun at the centre of
the sidereal system, appeared, in the eyes of the world, to have fallen
in love with her again himself; he was quite crazy about her. Now,
though his jealousy made him somewhat of a marplot, it gave enhanced
value to Valerie's favors. Marneffe meanwhile showed a blind confidence
in his chief, which degenerated into ridiculous complaisance. The only
person whom he really would not stand was Crevel.

Marneffe, wrecked by the debauchery of great cities, described by Roman
authors, though modern decency has no name for it, was as hideous as
an anatomical figure in wax. But this disease on feet, clothed in good
broadcloth, encased his lathlike legs in elegant trousers. The hollow
chest was scented with fine linen, and musk disguised the odors of
rotten humanity. This hideous specimen of decaying vice, trotting in red
heels--for Valerie dressed the man as beseemed his income, his cross,
and his appointment--horrified Crevel, who could not meet the colorless
eyes of the Government clerk. Marneffe was an incubus to the Mayor. And
the mean rascal, aware of the strange power conferred on him by Lisbeth
and his wife, was amused by it; he played on it as on an instrument; and
card