ssariat, where, thanks to the services of the two
brothers, the Baron deserved and won Napoleon's good graces. After 1807,
Baron Hulot was Commissary General for the army in Spain.

Having rung the bell, the citizen-captain made strenuous efforts to
pull his coat into place, for it had rucked up as much at the back as in
front, pushed out of shape by the working of a piriform stomach. Being
admitted as soon as the servant in livery saw him, the important
and imposing personage followed the man, who opened the door of the
drawing-room, announcing:

"Monsieur Crevel."

On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of the man who
bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age, rose
as if she had received an electric shock.

"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she
said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at her
mother's side.

After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went out
by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who looked
older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.

"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear,
without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had
dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.

The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy
demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which
the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little
worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with
blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes
buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made, it was
evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have hesitated to
recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she looked exactly
like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave the room without
bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel, to which that
gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.

"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said he.

"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.

"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.

"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."

"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain,
bowing again to Madame Hulot.

He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at E