ed 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 author of several works adopted by the University.

When la Peyrade presented himself, the family were all together. Madame
Barniol was just telling her mother about one of her babies, which was
slightly indisposed. They were dressed in their Sunday clothes, and were
sitting before the fireplace of the wainscoted salon on chairs bought
at a bargain; and they all felt an emotion when Genevieve, the cook and
portress, announced the personage of whom they were just then speaking
in connection with Celeste, whom, we must here state, Felix Phellion
loved, to the extent of going to mass to behold her. The learned
mathematician had made that effort in the morning, and the family were
joking him about it in a pleasant way, hoping in their hearts that
Celeste and her parents might understand the treasure that was thus
offered to them.

"Alas! the Thuilliers seem to me infatuated with a very dangerous man,"
said Madame Phellion. "He took Madame Colleville by the arm this morning
after church, and they went together to the Luxembourg."

"There is something about that lawyer," remarked Felix Phellion, "that
strikes me as sinister. He might be found to have committed some crime
and I shouldn't be surprised."

"That's going too far," said old Phellion.