her forehead, at the gowns of her choice; for how could shopkeepers
dispose of those products if there were no Madame Latournelle? All
these absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and
charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature, amusing herself as
she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not
endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view
the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has never been out of
Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she proclaims
herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates her
father, and adores her husband.

Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had
attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more,
he had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of
her "dot" in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon
intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against
whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected
him had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty
wife. The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really
fine qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and
reflected to himself that a woman's beauty is soon past and gone to a
husband. As to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court
bestowed in baptism his Norman name of "Exupere," Madame Latournelle
is still so surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of
thirty-five years and seven months, that she would still provide him,
if it were necessary, with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which
alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. "How handsome he
is, that son of mine!" she says to her little friend Modeste, as they
walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. "He is
like you," Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said,