"It's Pere Rigou," he said. "I must go round and open the door. Take
his horse, Socquard." And Urbain, a former trooper, who could not get
into the gendarmerie and had therefore taken service with Soudry, went
round the house to open the gates of the courtyard.

Socquard, a famous personage throughout the valley, was treated, as
you see, with very little ceremony by the valet. But so it is with
many illustrious people who are so kind as to walk and to sneeze and
to sleep and to eat precisely like common mortals.

Socquard, born a Hercules, could carry a weight of eleven hundred
pounds; a blow of his fist applied on a man's back would break the
vertebral column in two; he could bend an iron bar, or hold back a
carriage drawn by one horse. A Milo of Crotona in the valley, his fame
had spread throughout the department, where all sorts of foolish
stories were current about him, as about all celebrities. It was told
how he had once carried a poor woman and her donkey and her basket on
his back to market; how he had been known to eat a whole ox and drink
the fourth of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc. Gentle as a
marriageable girl, Socquard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid
face, broad shoulders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like
the bellows of a forge, possessed a flute-like voice, the limpid tones
of which surprised all those who heard them for the first time.

Like Tonsard, whose renown released him from the necessity of giving
proofs of his ferocity, in fact, like all other men who are backed by
public opinion of one kind or another, Socquard never displayed his
extraordinary muscular force unless asked to do so by friends. He now
took the horse as the usurer drew up at the steps of the portico.