skin, in the pocket of which might be discerned the round outline of a
monstrous snuff-box. A snuff-box to a pug nose is a law without
exception.

A son of the Revolution and a spectator of the Empire, Minoret-Levrault
did not meddle with politics; as to his religious opinions, he had
never set foot in a church except to be married; as to his private
principles, he kept them within the civil code; all that the law did
not forbid or could not prevent he considered right. He never read
anything but the journal of the department of the Seine-et-Oise,
and a few printed instructions relating to his business. He was
considered a clever agriculturist; but his knowledge was only
practical. In him the moral being did not belie the physical. He
seldom spoke, and before speaking he always took a pinch of snuff to
give himself time, not to find ideas, but words. If he had been a
talker you would have felt that he was out of keeping with himself.
Reflecting that this elephant minus a trumpet and without a mind was
called Minoret-Levrault, we are compelled to agree with Sterne as to
the occult power of names, which sometimes ridicule and sometimes
foretell characters.

In spite of his visible incapacity he had acquired during the last
thirty-six years (the Revolution helping him) an income of thirty
thousand francs, derived from farm lands, woods and meadows. If
Minoret, being master of the coach-lines of Nemours and those of the
Gatinais to Paris, still worked at his business, it was less from
habit than for the sake of an only son, to whom he was anxious to give
a fine career. This son, who was now (to use an expression of the
peasantry) a "monsieur," had just completed his legal studies and was
about to take his degree as licentiate, preparatory to being called to