Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/40

 covering; the old silk handkerchief which did duty for a tie, his whole dress told of the cynical wretchedness to which his passions condemned him.

Two eyes like goats’, with the eyeballs encircled with yellow, both lascivious and cowardly, rose about this ensemble of forbidding things. Nobody was more feared or respected in Nemours than Goupil. Armed with pretensions allowed by his ugliness, he had that detestable intelligence peculiar to those who give themselves free license, and he used it to avenge the disappointments of a ceaseless jealousy. He rhymed satirical couplets that are sung at carnivals, he organized mock serenades, he alone wrote the little newspaper of the town. Dionis, a cunning, insincere man, but timid for all that, kept Goupil as much from fear as on account of his exceeding intelligence and his sound knowledge of the concerns of the country. But the master so much distrusted the clerk, that he kept the accounts himself, did not lodge him in his own house, kept him at a distance, and never entrusted him with any secret or delicate affair. Therefore the clerk flattered his employer by hiding the resentment that this behavior caused him, and he watched Madame Dionis with an idea of vengeance. Being gifted with keen apprehension, work was no labor to him.

“Oh! you, you are already mocking our misfortune,” replied the postmaster to the clerk, who was rubbing his hands.

As Goupil meanly humored all the passions of Désiré, who for five years had made a companion of