the second floor of the town hall to the "Gourdon Museum," after the
collector's death.

"I rely upon the gratitude of my fellow-citizens to attach my name to
the gift," he replied; "for I dare not hope they would place a marble
bust of me--"

"It would be the very least we could do for you," they rejoined; "are
you not the glory of our town?"

Thus the man actually came to consider himself one of the celebrities
of Burgundy. The surest incomes are not from consols after all; those
our vanity obtains for us have better security. This man of science
was, to employ Lupin's superlatives, happy! happy!! happy!!!

Gourdon, the clerk of the court, brother of the doctor, was a pitiful
little creature, whose features all gathered about his nose, so that
the nose seemed the point of departure for the forehead, the cheeks,
and the mouth, all of which were connected with it just as the ravines
of a mountain begin at the summit. This pinched little man was thought
to be one of the greatest poets in Burgundy,--a Piron, it was the
fashion to say. The dual merits of the two brothers gave rise to the
remark: "We have the brothers Gourdon at Soulanges--two very
distinguished men; men who could hold their own in Paris."

Devoted to the game of cup-and-ball, the clerk of the court became
possessed by another mania,--that of composing an ode in honor of an
amusement which amounted to a passion in the eighteenth century.
Manias among mediocrats often run in couples. Gourdon junior gave
birth to his poem during the reign of Napoleon. That fact is