Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of
by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer
hard work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by his master, who
gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with no
semblance of youth,--Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would
willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes
were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a
cannon, whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp
hair, and whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes
from the time he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain
his whole being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct,
he went his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of
the heart Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire.
Modeste had christened this grotesque little being her "Black Dwarf."
The nickname sent him to the pages of Walter Scott's novel, and he one
day said to Modeste: "Will you accept a rose against the evil day from
your mysterious dwarf?" Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer
to its humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls
bestow on the men who cannot please them. Butscha's conception of
himself was lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been
out of Havre.

Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen
that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the
Latournelle family,--the head clerk being included in the latter term.
Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris,--a high hill at
the foot of which the city lies; with this difference, that the hill
and the city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that Havre is
helplessly circumscribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short,
that the mouth of the river, the harbor, and the docks present a very