rrying the torch,
it was reduced to his exact proportions, and faithfully copied all his
movements. In the net he had eight big fish which were still quivering.

As Jeanne and Julien were driving home, well wrapped up in cloaks and
rugs which the Fourvilles had lent them,

"What a good-hearted man that giant is," said Jeanne, almost to herself.

"Yes," answered Julien; "but he makes too much show of his affection,
sometimes, before people."

A week after their visit to the Fourvilles, they called on the
Couteliers, who were supposed to be the highest family in the province,
and whose estate lay near Cany. The new chateau, built in the reign of
Louis XIV, lay in a magnificent park, entirely surrounded by walls, and
the ruins of the old chateau could be seen from the higher parts of the
grounds.

A liveried servant showed the visitors into a large, handsome room. In
the middle of the floor an enormous Sevres vase stood on a pedestal,
into which a crystal case had been let containing the king's autograph
letter, offering this gift to the Marquis Leopold Herve Joseph Germer de
Varneville, de Rollebosc de Coutelier. Jeanne and Julien were looking at
this royal present when the marquis and marquise came in, the latter
wearing her hair powdered.

The marquise thought her rank constrained her to be amiable, and her
desire to appear condescending made her affected. Her husband was a big
man, with white hair brushed straight up all over his head, and a
haughtiness in his voice, in all his movements, in his every attitude
which plainly showed the esteem in which he held himself. They were
people who had a strict etiquette for everything, and whose feelings
seemed always stilted, like their words.

They both talked on without waiting for an answer, smiled with an air of
indifference, and behaved as if they were accomplishing a duty imposed
upon them by their superior birth, in receiving the smaller nobles of
the province with such politeness. Jeanne and Julien tried to make
themselves agreeable, though they felt ill at ease, and when the time
came to conclude their visit they hardly knew how to retire, though they
did not want to stay any longer. However, the marquise, herself, ended
the visit naturally and simply by stopping short the conversation, like
a queen ending an audience.

"I don't think we will call on anyone else, unless you want to," said
Julien, as they were going back. "The Fourvilles are quite as many
frie