had acquired in the company of his father-in-law a sort of bantering
talk, much affected by old Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened
at the end as if the finger of God intended to mark him, gave him a
voice which came from his palate, like that of all persons disfigured
by a disease which thickens the nasal passages, through which the air
then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other,
and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more
apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a
certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of
a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least observing of
spectators.

If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to
him and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their
existence, so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other
households in the valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without
being other than the instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an
immense influence on the struggle that was about to take place, being
the friend and counsellor of all the complainants of the lower
classes. His inn, as we shall presently see, was the rendezvous for
the aggressors; in fact, he became their chief, partly on account of
the fear he inspired throughout the valley--less, however, by his
actual deeds than by those that were constantly expected of him. The
threat of this man was as much dreaded as the thing threatened, so
that he never had occasion to execute it.

Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters