now made use of many of his father's jokes, and a little of the slime
of early days was beginning to appear on the surface of his declining
life. About five or six times a month, when the soup was rich and good
he would deposit his spoon in his empty plate and say, as if the
proposition were entirely novel:--

"That's better than a kick on the shin-bone!"

On hearing that witticism for the first time Theodose, to whom it was
really new, laughed so heartily that the handsome Thuillier was
tickled in his vanity as he had never been before. After that,
Theodose greeted the same speech with a knowing little smile. This
slight detail will explain how it was that on the morning of the day
when Theodose had his passage at arms with Vinet he had said to
Thuillier, as they were walking in the garden to see the effect of a
frost:--

"You have much more wit than you give yourself credit for."

To which he received this answer:--

"In any other career, my dear Theodose, I should have made my way
nobly; but the fall of the Emperor broke my neck."

"There is still time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place,
what did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do to get the cross?"

There la Peyrade laid his finger on a sore wound which Thuillier hid
from every eye so carefully that even his sister did not know of it;
but the young man, interested in studying these bourgeois, had divined