Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/72

 as turned pale, upon which business, disappointments and disgust have left their traces, wrinkled with thought and also with the continual contraction customary with people who are obliged not to repeat everything; but it was often illuminated by those smiles which are peculiar to those men who alternately believe everything or nothing, accustomed to hear and see everything without surprise, to pierce the mysteries that self-interest unfolds at the bottom of all hearts. Under his hair, less white than faded, waving back over his head, he had a shrewd forehead whose yellow color harmonized with the threads of his scanty hair. His puckered face gave him all the more resemblance to a fox as his nose was short and pointed. Out of his wide mouth, like that of great talkers, he spurted white sparks which made his conversation so showery, that Goupil wickedly said: “One wants an umbrella to listen to him,” or else: “Judgments à la justice de paix are raining.” Behind his spectacles his eyes looked sharp; but, if he took them off, his dulled glance seemed simple. Although he was gay, almost jovial even, he always gave himself by his bearing, a little too much the look of an important man. He nearly always held his hands in his breeches pockets, and only removed them to secure his spectacles with an almost mocking movement which seemed to announce a shrewd observation or some victorious argument. His gestures, loquacity and innocent affectations betrayed the former provincial solicitor; but these