eived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary man.
Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was a
terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such terrible
punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late. Baudoyer
wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray trousers
and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and ill-shod. From
the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of old trinkets, among
which in 1824 he still wore "American beads," which were very much the
fashion in the year VII.

In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious
ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that
of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth
was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to
those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could
comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her husband, her
religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a favorable opinion
of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him as the father of her
child, her husband, the temporal power, as the vicar of Saint-Paul's
told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin to make a single
gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single word which would
reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile Baudoyer. She even
professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her ears were receptive
of many things; she thought them over, weighed and compared them in the
solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of men and events that at
the time when our history begins she was the hidden oracle of the two
functionaries, her husband and father, who had, unconsciously, come
to do nothing whatever without consulting her. Old Saillard would say,
innocently, "Isn't she clever, that Elisabeth of mine?" But Baudoyer,
too great a fool not to be puffed up by the false reputation the
quartier Saint-Antoine bestowed upon him, denied his wife's cleverness
all the while that he was making use of it.

Elisabeth had long felt sure that her uncle Bidault, otherwise called
Gigonnet, was rich and handled vast sums of money. Enlightened by
self-interest, she had come to understand Monsieur des Lupeaulx far
better than the minister understood him. Finding herself married to
a fool, she never allowed hers