deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in
which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square
head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary
man. Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was
a terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such
terrible punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late.
Baudoyer wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray
trousers and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and
ill-shod. From the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of
old trinkets, among which in 1824 he still wore "American beads,"
which were very much the fashion in the year VII.

In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious
ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion,
that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass,
Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her
ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind
who could comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her
husband, her religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a
favorable opinion of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him
as the father of her child, her husband, the temporal power, as the
vicar of Saint-Paul's told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin
to make a single gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single
word which would reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile
Baudoyer. She even professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her
ears were receptive of many things; she thought them over, weighed and
compared them in the solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of
men and events that at the time when our history begins she was the
hidden oracle of the two functionaries, her husband and father, who