the Bar. Monsieur and Madame Minoret-Levrault--for behind our colossus
every one will perceive a woman without whom this signal good-fortune
would have been impossible--left their son free to choose his own
career; he might be a notary in Paris, king's-attorney in some
district, collector of customs no matter where, broker, or post
master, as he pleased. What fancy of his could they ever refuse him?
to what position of life might he not aspire as the son of a man about
whom the whole countryside, from Montargis to Essonne, was in the
habit of saying, "Pere Minoret doesn't even know how rich he is"?

This saying had obtained fresh force about four years before this
history begins, when Minoret, after selling his inn, built stables and
a splendid dwelling, and removed the post-house from the Grand'Rue to
the wharf. The new establishment cost two hundred thousand francs,
which the gossip of thirty miles in circumference more than doubled.
The Nemours mail-coach service requires a large number of horses. It
goes to Fontainebleau on the road to Paris, and from there diverges to
Montargis and also to Montereau. The relays are long, and the sandy
soil of the Montargis road calls for the mythical third horse, always
paid for but never seen. A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's
wealth, at the head of such an establishment might well be called,
without contradiction, the master of Nemours. Though he never thought
of God or devil, being a practical materialist, just as he was a
practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, and a practical miser,
Minoret had enjoyed up to this time a life of unmixed happiness,--if
we can call pure materialism happiness. A physiologist, observing the
rolls of flesh which covered the last vertebrae and pressed upon the
giant's cerebellum, and, above all, hearing the shrill, sharp voice
which contrasted so absurdly with his huge body, would have understood
why this ponderous, coarse being adored his only son, and why he had