cult power of names, which sometimes
ridicule and sometimes foretell characters.

In spite of his visible incapacity he had acquired during the last
thirty-six years (the Revolution helping him) an income of thirty
thousand francs, derived from farm lands, woods and meadows. If Minoret,
being master of the coach-lines of Nemours and those of the Gatinais to
Paris, still worked at his business, it was less from habit than for the
sake of an only son, to whom he was anxious to give a fine career. This
son, who was now (to use an expression of the peasantry) a "monsieur,"
had just completed his legal studies and was about to take his degree as
licentiate, preparatory to being called to the Bar. Monsieur and Madame
Minoret-Levrault--for behind our colossus every one will perceive
a woman without whom this signal good-fortune would have been
impossible--left their son free to choose his own career; he might be a
notary in Paris, king's-attorney in some district, collector of customs
no matter where, broker, or post master, as he pleased. What fancy of
his could they ever refuse him? to what position of life might he
not aspire as the son of a man about whom the whole countryside, from
Montargis to Essonne, was in the habit of saying, "Pere Minoret doesn't
even know how rich he is"?

This saying had obtained fresh force about four years before this
history begins, when Minoret, after selling his inn, built stables and a
splendid dwelling, and removed the post-house from the Grand'Rue to the
wharf. The new establishment cost two hundred thousand francs, which the
gossip of thirty miles in circumference more than doubled. The Nemours
mail-coach service requires a large number of horses. It goes to
Fontainebleau on the road to Paris, and from there diverges to Montargis
and also to Montereau. The relays are long, and the sandy soil of the
Montargis road calls for the mythical third horse, always paid for but
never seen. A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's wealth, at the head
of such an establishment might well be called, without contradiction,
the master of Nemours. Though he never thought of God or devil, being
a practical materialist, just as he was a practical agriculturist, a
practical egoist, and a practical miser, Minoret had enjoyed up to
this time a life of unmixed happiness,--if we can call pure materialism
happiness. A physiologist, observing the rolls of flesh which covered
the last vertebrae and pressed upon the