church-goers, who were on their way to
mass. She was determined to overtake this uncle and show him to the post
master.

Nemours is commanded on the Gatinais side by a hill, at the foot of
which runs the road to Montargis and the Loing. The church, on the
stones of which time has cast a rich discolored mantle (it was rebuilt
in the fourteenth century by the Guises, for whom Nemours was raised to
a peerage-duchy), stands at the end of the little town close to a
great arch which frames it. For buildings, as for men, position does
everything. Shaded by a few trees, and thrown into relief by a neatly
kept square, this solitary church produces a really grandiose effect. As
the post master of Nemours entered the open space, he beheld his uncle
with the young girl called Ursula on his arm, both carrying prayer-books
and just entering the church. The old man took off his hat in the porch,
and his head, which was white as a hill-top covered with snow, shone
among the shadows of the portal.

"Well, Minoret, what do you say to the conversion of your uncle?" cried
the tax-collector of Nemours, named Cremiere.

"What do you expect me to say?" replied the post master, offering him a
pinch of snuff.

"Well answered, Pere Levrault. You can't say what you think, if it is
true, as an illustrious author says it is, that a man must think his
words before he speaks his thoughts," cried a young man, standing near,
who played the part of Mephistopheles in the little town.

This ill-conditioned youth, named Goupil, was head clerk to Monsieur
Cremiere-Dionis, the Nemours notary. Notwithstanding a past conduct that
was almost debauched, Dionis had taken Goupil into his office when a
career in Paris--where the clerk had wasted all the money he inherited
from his father, a well-to-do farmer, who educated him for a notary--was
brought to a close by his absolute pauperism. The mere sight of Goupil
told an observer that he had made haste to enjoy life, and had paid
dear for his enjoyments. Though very short, his chest and shoulders were
developed at twenty-seven years of age like those of a man of forty.
Legs small and weak, and a broad face, with a cloudy complexion like
the sky before a storm, surmounted by a bald forehead, brought out still
further the oddity of his conformation. His face seemed as though it
belonged to a hunchback whose hunch was inside of him. One singularity
of that pale and sour visage confirmed the impression of an invi