glance, well-informed as to all the interests of the neighborhood,
owing his aptitude in managing affairs to a certain facility of
speech, passed for what is called a _quizzer_, saying things plainly
and with more cleverness than the aborigines could put into their
conversations. Still a bachelor, he was awaiting a rich marriage
through the offices of his two protectors, Grevin and the Comte de
Gondreville. Consequently, barrister Giguet was not a little surprised
on seeing Achille appear at the meeting in company with Monsieur
Phileas Beauvisage.

The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to
be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund
person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm and
lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further
brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a
disposition of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the
word "simpering" seems to have been created. Phileas Beauvisage was
endowed with so great a contentment with himself that he smiled on all
the world and under all circumstances. Those simpering lips smiled at
a funeral. The liveliness that abounded in his infantine blue eyes did
not contradict that perpetual and well-nigh intolerable smile.

This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence
and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his
own, remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness.
He always "had the honor"; to all his inquiries as to the health of
absent persons he added the adjectives "dear," "good," "excellent." He
lavished condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty
miseries and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a
deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of