your
neighbor's countenance impresses itself upon your mind, installs itself
there, assumes importance, and, in spite of yourself, all the other
observations subsequently made by you group around this spot, this nail,
this grimace. Think over it, dear reader, and you will see that every
opinion you may have as to a fact, a person, or an object has been
sensibly influenced by the recollection of the little trifle that caught
your eye at the first glance. What young girl victim of first impressions
has not refused one or two husbands on account of a waistcoat too loose,
a cravat badly tied, an inopportune sneeze, a foolish smile, or a boot
too pointed at the toe?

One does not like admitting to one's self that such trifles can serve as
a base to the opinion one has of any one, and one must seek attentively
in order to discover within one's mind these unacknowledged germs.

I recollect quite well that the first time I had the honor of calling on
Madame de M., I noticed that one of her teeth, the first molar on the
right, was quite black. I only caught a glimpse of the little black
monster, such was the care taken to hide it, yet I could not get this
discovery out of my head. I soon noticed that Madame de M. made frightful
grimaces to hide her tooth, and that she took only the smallest possible
mouthfuls at table to spare the nervous susceptibilities of the little
monster.

I arrived at the pitch of accounting for all the mental and physical
peculiarities of Madame de M. by the presence of this slight blemish, and
despite myself this black tooth personified the Countess so well that
even now, although it has been replaced by another magnificent one, twice
as big and as white as the bottom of a plate, even now, I say, Madame de
M. can not open her mouth without my looking naturally at it.

But to return to our subject. Amid all this conjugal happiness, so
delightfully surrounded, face to face with dear old Oscar, so good, so
confiding, so much in love with this little cherub in a Louis XV dress,
who carried grace and naivete to so strange a pitch, I had been struck by
the too well combed and foppish head of the cousin in the white
waistcoat. This head had attracted my attention like the stain on the
ceiling of which I spoke just now, like the Countess's black tooth, and
despite myself I did not take my eyes off the angler as he passed the
silver blade of his knife through a slice of that indigestible fruit
which I like t