Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/67

 soul, was to have so great an influence over the events and the men in this history that it is necessary first to trace the source of his authority.

Minoret took in three newspapers; one liberal, one ministerial, one ultra, several periodicals and some scientific journals, collections of which swelled his library. The newspapers, the encyclopedist and the books were an attraction to a former captain of the Royal-Swedish regiment, named Monsieur de Jordy, a Voltairean gentleman and an old bachelor who lived upon a pension of sixteen hundred francs and a life annuity. After having, through the medium of the curé, read the gazettes for several days, Monsieur de Jordy thought proper to go and thank the doctor. From the first visit, the old captain, formerly a professor in the military colleges, won the good graces of the old doctor, who hastened to return his call. Monsieur de Jordy, a dry, thin little man, always troubled with full bloodedness, although he had a very pale face, struck one at first by his fine forehead à la Charles XII., above which he kept his hair cut as close as that of that soldier-king. His blue eyes, profoundly sad, that seemed to say: “Love has passed by here,” interested one at first sight, and where one might catch glimpses of the memories which he otherwise guarded with such profound secrecy, that his old friends never surprised either any allusion to his past life or any one of those exclamations wrung through a similarity of calamities. He concealed the mournful mystery of his past under a philosophic