clerks. Religious, and generous in secret, Mathias was found whenever
good was to be done without remuneration. An active member on hospital
and other benevolent committees, he subscribed the largest sums to
relieve all sudden misfortunes and emergencies, as well as to create
certain useful permanent institutions; consequently, neither he nor
his wife kept a carriage. Also his word was felt to be sacred, and his
coffers held as much of the money of others as a bank; and also, we may
add, he went by the name of "Our good Monsieur Mathias," and when he
died, three thousand persons followed him to his grave.

Solonet was the style of young notary who comes in humming a tune,
affects light-heartedness, declares that business is better done with
a laugh than seriously. He is the notary captain of the national guard,
who dislikes to be taken for a notary, solicits the cross of the Legion
of honor, keeps his cabriolet, and leaves the verification of his deeds
to his clerks; he is the notary who goes to balls and theatres, buys
pictures and plays at ecarte; he has coffers in which gold is received
on deposit and is later returned in bank-bills,--a notary who follows
his epoch, risks capital in doubtful investments, speculates with all
he can lay his hands on, and expects to retire with an income of thirty
thousand francs after ten years' practice; in short, the notary whose
cleverness comes of his duplicity, whom many men fear as an accomplice
possessing their secrets, and who sees in his practice a means of
ultimately marrying some blue-stockinged heiress.

When the slender, fair-haired Solonet, curled, perfumed, and booted like
the leading gentleman at the Vaudeville, and dressed like a dandy whose
most important business is a duel, entered Madame Evangelista's salon,
preceding his brother notary, whose advance was delayed by a twinge
of the gout, the two men presented to the life one of those famous
caricatures entitled "Former Times and the Present Day," which had such
eminent success under the Empire. If Madame and Mademoiselle Evangelista
to whom the "good Monsieur Mathias," was personally unknown, felt, on
first seeing him, a slight inclination to laugh, they were soon touched
by the old-fashioned grace with which he greeted them. The words he used
were full of that amenity which amiable old men convey as much by the
ideas they suggest as by the manner in which they express them. The
younger notary, with his flippant to