of his theatre to Brahim Bey--who listened to him as one turns over the
pages of a naughty book--and to talk theology to the young priest who
was his nearest neighbour, a curate of some little southern village,
lean and with a complexion sunburnt till it matched the cloth of his
cassock in colour, with fiery patches above the cheek-bones, and the
pointed, forward-pushing nose of the ambitious man, who would remark
to Cardailhac very loudly, in a tone of protection and sacerdotal
authority:

"We are quite pleased with M. Guizot. He is doing very well--very well.
It is a conquest for the Church."

Seated next this pontiff, with a black neck-band, old Schwalbach, the
famous picture-dealer, displayed his prophet's beard, tawny in places
like a dirty fleece, his three overcoats tinged by mildew, all that
loose and negligent attire for which he was excused in the name of art,
and because, in a time when the mania for picture galleries had already
begun to cause millions to change hands, it was the proper thing to
entertain the man who was the best placed for the conduct of these
absurdly vain transactions. Schwalbach did not speak, contenting himself
with gazing around him through his enormous monocle, shaped like a
hand magnifying-glass, and with smiling in his beard over the singular
neighbours made by this unique assembly. Thus it happened that M. de
Monpavon had quite close to him--and it was a sight to watch how the
disdainful curve of his nose was accentuated at each glance in that
direction--the singer Garrigou, a fellow-countryman of Jansoulet, a
distinguished ventriloquist who sang Figaro in the dialect of the south,
and had no equal in his imitations of animals. Just beyond, Cabassu,
another compatriot, a little short and dumpy man, with the neck of a
bull and the biceps of a statue by Michel Angelo, who suggested at