their fortune to their talents; they were politicians. Baudoyer was
considered the more able of the two; his position as head of a bureau
presupposed labor that was more intricate and arduous than that of a
cashier. Moreover, Isidore, though the son of a leather-dresser, had
had the genius to study and to cast aside his father's business and
find a career in politics, which had led him to a post of eminence. In
short, silent and uncommunicative as he was, he was looked upon as a
deep thinker, and perhaps, said the admiring circle, he would some day
become deputy of the eighth arrondissement. As Gigonnet listened to
such remarks as these, he pressed his already pinched lips closer
together, and threw a glance at his great-niece, Elisabeth.

In person, Isidore was a tall, stout man of thirty-seven, who
perspired freely, and whose head looked as if he had water on the
brain. This enormous head, covered with chestnut hair cropped close,
was joined to the neck by rolls of flesh which overhung the collar of
his coat. He had the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a
stomach which sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use
a saying of Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of
the Emperor Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the
flattened nose turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short
chin. The forehead was low and narrow. Though his temperament was
lymphatic, the devout Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal
passion which time did not lessen.

In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor
and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a
political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department,
a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a
flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut