Monsieur Fontan passes the open door, and we can hear the breathing of the corpulent recluse.  As soon as he has carried away the enormous overcoat that sheathes him, like the hide of a pachyderm, and is disappearing, Brisbille begins to roar, “What a snout!  Did you see it, eh?  Did you see the jaws he swings from his ears, eh?  The exact likeness of a hog!”

Then he adds, in a burst of vulgar delight, “Luckily, we can expect it’ll all burst before long!”

He laughs alone.  Mame goes and sits apart.  She detests Brisbille, who is the personification of envy, malice and coarseness.  And everybody hates this marionette, too, for his drunkenness and his forward notions.  All the same, when there is something you want him to do, you choose Sunday morning to call, and you linger there, knowing that you will meet others.  This has become a tradition.

“They’re going to cure little Antoinette,” says Benoit, as he frames himself in the doorway.

Benoit is like a newspaper.  He to whom nothing ever happens only lives to announce what is happening to others.

“I know,” cries Mame, “they told me so this morning.  Several people already knew it this morning at seven.  A big, famous doctor’s coming to the castle itself, for the hunting, and he only treats just the eyes.”

“Poor little angel!” sighs a woman, who has just come in.

Brisbille intervenes, rancorous and quarrelsome, “Yes, they’re always going to cure the child, so they say.  Bad luck to them!  Who cares about her?”

“Everybody does!” reply two incensed women, in the same breath.

“And meanwhile,” said Brisbille, viciously, “she’s snuffing it.”  And he chews, once more, his customary saying—­pompous and foolish as the catchword of a public meeting—­“She’s a victim of society!”

Monsieur Joseph Boneas has come into Brisbille’s, and he does it complacently, for he is not above mixing with the people of the neighborhood.  Here, too, are Monsieur Pocard, and Crillon, new shaved, his polished skin taut and shiny, and several other people.  Prominent among them one marks the wavering head of Monsieur Mielvaque, who, in his timidity and careful respect for custom, took his hat off as he crossed the threshold.  He is only a copying-clerk at the factory; he wears much-used and dubious linen, and a frail and orphaned jacket which he dons for all occasions.

Monsieur Joseph Boneas overawes me.  My eyes are attracted by his delicate profile, the dull gloom of his morning attire, and the luster of his black gloves, which are holding a little black rectangle, gilt-edged.

He, too, has removed his hat.  So I, in my corner discreetly remove mine, too.