own, and twenty-five years
old, had fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of
Soulanges. The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred
francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of
Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only daughter,
Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely
have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the provinces.
Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection rather difficult
to trace through family ramifications which make members of the middle
classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each other, owed a modest
position in a government office to the assistance of his father and
Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the terrible happiness of being the
father of two children in three years. His own father, blessed with
five, was unable to assist him. His wife's father owned nothing beside
his house at Soulanges and an income of two thousand francs. Madame
Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at her father's home with her
two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose official duty obliged him to
travel through the department, came to see her from time to time.

Gaubertin's exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary of
young Sibilet's life, needs a few more explanatory details.

Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a
woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office. Endowed with
the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to
revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by
cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the
office of a provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing
this defect under a gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not
possess. Many false natures mask their hollowness in this way; be
rough with them in return and the effect produced is that of a balloon
collapsed by a prick. Such was Sibilet. But as most men are not
observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a
thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet's grumbling manner was considered
the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much praised by his
master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no temptation could shake.
Some men are as much benefited by their defects as others by their good
qualiti