Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.

He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin

body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of

his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,

flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth

waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round,

well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking

out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair

whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a

garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose

hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a

fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin

rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist

and the egotism of a bourgeois.

He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out

first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet

remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and

took off his cap in his usual way.

"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said

the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.

"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the

cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the

evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a

dab fish and never said a word."

"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that

makes the society-man."

"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.

"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is

possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on-"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a

doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become

whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in

history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.

Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the

bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had

put it behind my ear!"

Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"

were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into

the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his

face was rubicund and his form athletic.




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