er, and separated by a
hollow space or line, you can hardly imagine how perplexing such a face
will be to you, especially if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a
pointed chin like that of Mephistopheles,--a type which painters give
to cats. This double resemblance was observable on the face of Babylas
Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown,
all the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with
motion, let the white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered
crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent
Norman, clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on
a couple of pins, and knowing him to be one of the most trustworthy
of men, would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such
physical misrepresentation.

Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of
by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer hard
work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by his master, who
gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with
no semblance of youth,--Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would
willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes
were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a cannon,
whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp hair, and
whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes from the time
he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain his whole
being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct, he went
his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of the heart
Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire. Modeste had
christened this grotesque little being her "Black Dwarf." The nickname
sent him to the pages of Walter Scott's novel, and he one day said
to Modeste: "Will you accept a rose against the evil day from your
mysterious dwarf?" Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer to its
humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls bestow
on the men who cannot please them. Butscha's conception of himself was
lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been out of Havre.

Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen
that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the
Latournelle family,--the head clerk being included in the latter term.
Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartr