quarter had kept him major of the battalion for eight years. He was
now nearly sixty, and seeing the moment coming when he must lay off
the sword and stock, he hoped that the king would deign to reward his
services by granting him at last the Legion of honor.

Truth compels us to say, in spite of the stain this pettiness will put
upon so fine a character, that Commander Phellion rose upon the tips
of his toes at the receptions in the Tuileries, and did all that he
could to put himself forward, even eyeing the citizen-king perpetually
when he dined at his table. In short, he intrigued in a dumb sort of
way; but had never yet obtained a look in return from the king of his
choice. The worthy man had more than once thought, but was not yet
decided, to beg Monsieur Minard to assist him in obtaining his secret
desire.

Phellion, a man of passive obedience, was stoical in the matter of
duty, and iron in all that touched his conscience. To complete this
picture by a sketch of his person, we must add that at fifty-nine
years of age Phellion had "thickened," to use a term of the bourgeois
vocabulary. His face, of one monotonous tone and pitted with the
small-pox, had grown to resemble a full moon; so that his lips,
formerly large, now seemed of ordinary size. His eyes, much weakened,
and protected by glasses, no longer showed the innocence of their
light-blue orbs, which in former days had often excited a smile; his
white hair now gave gravity to much that twelve years earlier had
looked like silliness, and lent itself to ridicule. Time, which does
such damage to faces with refined and delicate features, only improves
those which, in their youth, have been course and massive. This was
the case with Phellion. He occupied the leisure of his old age in
making an abridgment of the History of France; for Phellion was the