queen understood. When the fat old Guerbet had mimicked Madame Isaure,
Gaubertin's wife, laughed at her languishing airs, imitated her thin
voice, her pinched mouth, and her juvenile ways; when the Abbe Taupin
had related one of the tales of his repertory; when Lupin had told of
some event at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Madame Soudry had been deluged with
compliments ad nauseum, the company would say: "We have had a charming
game of boston."

Too self-indulgent to be at the trouble of driving over to the
Soudrys' merely to hear the vapid talk of its visitors and to see a
Parisian monkey in the guise of an old woman, Rigou, far superior in
intelligence and education to this petty society, never made his
appearance unless business brought him over to meet the notary. He
excused himself from visiting on the ground of his occupations, his
habits, and his health, which latter did not allow him, he said, to
return at night along a road which led by the foggy banks of the
Thune.

The tall, stiff usurer always had an imposing effect upon Madame
Soudry's company, who instinctively recognized in his nature the
cruelty of the tiger with steel claws, the craft of a savage, the
wisdom of one born in a cloister and ripened by the sun of gold,--a
man to whom Gaubertin had never yet been willing to fully commit
himself.

The moment the little green carriole and the bay horse passed the Cafe
de la Paix, Urbain, Soudry's man-servant, who was seated on a bench
under the dining-room windows, and was gossipping with the
tavern-keeper, shades his eyes with his hand to see who was coming.