prayer-books and just entering the church. The old man took off his
hat in the porch, and his head, which was white as a hill-top covered
with snow, shone among the shadows of the portal.

"Well, Minoret, what do you say to the conversion of your uncle?"
cried the tax-collector of Nemours, named Cremiere.

"What do you expect me to say?" replied the post master, offering him
a pinch of snuff.

"Well answered, Pere Levrault. You can't say what you think, if it is
true, as an illustrious author says it is, that a man must think his
words before he speaks his thoughts," cried a young man, standing
near, who played the part of Mephistopheles in the little town.

This ill-conditioned youth, named Goupil, was head clerk to Monsieur
Cremiere-Dionis, the Nemours notary. Notwithstanding a past conduct
that was almost debauched, Dionis had taken Goupil into his office
when a career in Paris--where the clerk had wasted all the money he
inherited from his father, a well-to-do farmer, who educated him for a
notary--was brought to a close by his absolute pauperism. The mere
sight of Goupil told an observer that he had made haste to enjoy life,
and had paid dear for his enjoyments. Though very short, his chest and
shoulders were developed at twenty-seven years of age like those of a
man of forty. Legs small and weak, and a broad face, with a cloudy
complexion like the sky before a storm, surmounted by a bald forehead,
brought out still further the oddity of his conformation. His face
seemed as though it belonged to a hunchback whose hunch was inside of
him. One singularity of that pale and sour visage confirmed the
impression of an invisible gobbosity; the nose, crooked and out of