large chin fell in a straight line below them. His face, high-colored
and square in outline, revealed, by the lines of its wrinkles and by
the general character of its expression, the ingenuous craftiness of a
peasant. The strength of his body, the stoutness of his limbs, the
squareness of his shoulders, the width of his feet,--all denoted the
villager transplanted to Paris. His powerful hairy hands, with their
large square nails, would alone have attested his origin if other
vestiges had not remained in various parts of his person. His lips
wore the cordial smile which shopkeepers put on when a customer
enters; but this commercial sunshine was really the image of his
inward content, and pictured the state of his kindly soul. His
distrust never went beyond the lines of his business, his craftiness
left him on the steps of the Bourse, or when he closed the pages of
his ledger. Suspicion was to him very much what his printed
bill-heads were,--a necessity of the sale itself. His countenance
presented a sort of comical assurance and conceit mingled with good
nature, which gave it originality and saved it from too close a
resemblance to the insipid face of a Parisian bourgeois. Without this
air of naive self-admiration and faith in his own person, he would
have won too much respect; he drew nearer to his fellows by thus
contributing his quota of absurdity. When speaking, he habitually
crossed his hands behind his back. When he thought he had said
something striking or gallant, he rose imperceptibly on the points of
his toes twice, and dropped back heavily on his heels, as if to
emphasize what he said. In the midst of an argument he might be seen
turning round upon himself and walking off a few steps, as if he had
gone to find objections with which he returned upon his adversary
brusquely. He never interrupted, and was sometimes a victim to this
careful observance of civility; for others would take the words out of
his mouth, and the good man had to yield his ground without opening