Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she
proclaims herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates
her father, and adores her husband.

Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had
attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he
had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of
her "dot" in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon
intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against
whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected him
had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty wife.
The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine
qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to
himself that a woman's beauty is soon past and gone to a husband. As
to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in
baptism his Norman name of "Exupere," Madame Latournelle is still so
surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five years and
seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary,
with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which alone can fully
express her impassioned maternity. "How handsome he is, that son of
mine!" she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church,
with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. "He is like you," Modeste
Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, "What horrid
weather!" This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an
accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been the chaperone of the
young girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now plotting
to set up what we have called, in the "Physiologie du Mariage," a
"mouse-trap."

As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the purest
honor and uprightness would allow him to be,--a man whom any stranger
would take for a rascal at sight of his queer physiognomy, to which,
however, the inhabitants of Havre were well accustomed. His eyesight,
said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear green goggles for the
protection of his eyes, which were constantly inflamed. The arch of each
eyebrow, defined by a thin down of hair, surrounded the tortoise-shell
rim of the glasses and made a couple of circles as it were, slightly
apart. If you have never observed on the human face the effect produced
by these circumferences placed one within the oth