so thin that the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small
features, which clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague
resemblance to a weasel's snout. Though she was past thirty years old
she looked scarcely more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue,
overweighted by heavy eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch
of the eyebrows, had little light in them. Everything about her
appearance was commonplace: witness her flaxen hair, tending to
whiteness; her flat forehead, from which the light did not reflect;
and her dull complexion, with gray, almost leaden, tones. The lower
part of the face, more triangular than oval, ended irregularly the
otherwise irregular outline of her face. Her voice had a rather pretty
range of intonation, from sharp to sweet. Elisabeth was a perfect
specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie who lectures her
husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her virtues; is
ambitious without intelligent object, and solely through the
development of her domestic selfishness. Had she lived in the country
she would have bought up adjacent land; being, as she was, connected
with the administration, she was determined to push her way. If we
relate the life of her father and mother, we shall show the sort of
woman she was by a picture of her childhood and youth.

Monsieur Saillard married the daughter of an upholsterer keeping shop
under the arcades of the Market. Limited means compelled Monsieur and
Madame Saillard at their start in life to bear constant privation.
After thirty-three years of married life, and twenty-nine years of
toil in a government office, the property of "the Saillards"--their
circle of acquaintance called them so--consisted of sixty thousand
francs entrusted to Falleix, the house in the place Royale, bought for
forty thousand in 1804, and thirty-six thousand francs given in dowry
to their daughter Elisabeth. Out of this capital about fifty thousand