so long been ruddy with the florid hues of a Rubens; and now a certain
discoloration and the deep tension of the wrinkles betrayed the
efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay. Hulot was now one of
those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts itself by tufts of
hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as moss grows on the
almost eternal monuments of the Roman Empire.

How had Valerie contrived to keep Crevel and Hulot side by side, each
tied to an apron-string, when the vindictive Mayor only longed to
triumph openly over Hulot? Without immediately giving an answer to
this question, which the course of the story will supply, it may be
said that Lisbeth and Valerie had contrived a powerful piece of
machinery which tended to this result. Marneffe, as he saw his wife
improved in beauty by the setting in which she was enthroned, like the
sun at the centre of the sidereal system, appeared, in the eyes of the
world, to have fallen in love with her again himself; he was quite
crazy about her. Now, though his jealousy made him somewhat of a
marplot, it gave enhanced value to Valerie's favors. Marneffe
meanwhile showed a blind confidence in his chief, which degenerated
into ridiculous complaisance. The only person whom he really would not
stand was Crevel.

Marneffe, wrecked by the debauchery of great cities, described by
Roman authors, though modern decency has no name for it, was as
hideous as an anatomical figure in wax. But this disease on feet,
clothed in good broadcloth, encased his lathlike legs in elegant
trousers. The hollow chest was scented with fine linen, and musk
disguised the odors of rotten humanity. This hideous specimen of
decaying vice, trotting in red heels--for Valerie dressed the man as
beseemed his income, his cross, and his appointment--horrified Crevel,
who could not meet the colorless eyes of the Government clerk.
Marneffe was an incubus to the Mayor. And the mean rascal, aware of
the strange power conferred on him by Lisbeth and his wife, was amused
by it; he played on it as on an instrument; and cards being the last
resource of a mind as completely played out as the body, he plucked
Crevel again and again, the Mayor thinking himself bound to
subserviency to the worthy official whom _he was cheating_.

Seeing Crevel a mere child in the hands of that hideous and atrocious
mummy, of whose utter vileness the Mayor knew nothing; and seeing him,
yet more, an object of deep contempt t