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Updated: June 9, 2025
And he fixed on his visitor a look which had the inquisitive, piercing expression of the eyes of a Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have ears of their own. Halpersohn was, to Godefroid's great astonishment, a man of fifty-six years of age, with small bow-legs, and a broad, powerful chest and shoulders.
He looked at these relics of the grandest things of the fallen monarchy, the noblesse and the law, and he could see no movement of the features, no change in the countenance, that revealed the presence of a worldly thought. Those men no longer remembered, or did not choose to remember, what they had been. This was Godefroid's first lesson.
He had been with the late M. de Beaudenord, Godefroid's father, and bore Godefroid an inveterate affection, a kind of heart complaint which has almost disappeared among domestic servants since savings banks were established. "All material well-being is based upon arithmetic.
It seemed as though the woman let rooms with the express purpose that no one should stay in them. Evidently the bed, chairs, tables, bureau, secretary, curtains, came from forced sales at auction, articles massed together in lots as having no separate intrinsic value. Madame Vauthier, with her hands on her hips, stood waiting for thanks; she took Godefroid's smile for one of surprise. "There!
He himself took the two crocks of water, carried them into the first of his rooms, in which were many pots of flowers, and returned to speak to the gardener, carefully closing the door behind him. Godefroid's door was open, for Nepomucene had begun his trips, and was stacking the wood in the front room.
It was Godefroid's wont to stay in a drawing-room for a bare ten minutes; he talked without any pretension to the women in it, and at these times they thought him very clever. In short, judge of his absorption; Joby, his horses and carriages, became secondary interests in his life.
Ever, on that darksome background of Chouans, peasants, country gentlemen, rebel leaders, spies, and officers of justice, he saw the vivid figures of the mother and the daughter detach themselves; the daughter misleading the mother; the daughter victim of a monster; victim, too, of her passion for one of those bold men whom, later, we have glorified as heroes, and to whom even Godefroid's imagination lent a likeness to the Charettes and the Georges Cadoudals, those giants of the struggle between the Republic and the Monarchy.
Well, dear boys, when Godefroid came of age, the Marquis d'Aiglemont submitted to him such an account of his trust as none of us would be likely to give a nephew; Godefroid's name was inscribed as the owner of eighteen thousand livres of rentes, a remnant of his father's wealth spared by the harrow of the great reduction under the Republic and the hailstorms of Imperial arrears.
Madame de la Chanterie admitted the justice of Godefroid's observations; but told him that she did not wish to make any change until she knew the intentions of her lodger, or rather her boarder. If he would conform to the customs of the house he could become her boarder; but these customs were widely different from those of Paris.
This sublime and perpetual imposture, proved by the complete illusion of the sick woman, produced on Godefroid's mind the impression of an Alpine precipice down which two chamois hunters picked their way.
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