Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/28

 thousand francs, that the gossips for thirty miles round doubled. The Nemours stage requires a large number of horses, it goes toward Paris as far as Fontainebleau and runs beyond the Montargis and Montereau roads; on both sides the stage is slow, and the sands of the Montargis road warrant that chimerical third horse which is always paid for and never seen. So a man built like Minoret, as rich as Minoret, and at the head of such an establishment could call himself without antiphrasis, the master of Nemours. Although he had never given a thought to God or the devil, and was as practical a materialist as he was a practical farmer, practical egotist, and practical miser, Minoret had, up till then, enjoyed unmixed happiness, if one may consider a purely material life as happiness. A physiologist, beholding the cushion of bare flesh enveloping the last vertebra and compressing this man’s hind brain, and, above all, hearing the clear, shrill voice which contrasted so ludicrously with his chest and shoulders, would have perfectly understood why this big, stout, thickset farmer adored his only son, and why, perhaps, he had waited so long for him, as the child’s name of Désiré sufficiently explained. In short, if love, by betraying a rich organization, is, in man, a promise of the grandest things, then philosophers will understand the causes of Minoret’s incapacity. The mother, whom the son fortunately resembled, vied with the father in spoiling him. No natural child could have resisted this idolatry. So Désiré, knowing the