knuckle, showed the power of his muscular system in their prominent blue veins.  He had the chest of the Farnese Hercules, and shoulders fit to carry the stocks.  Such shoulders are seen nowadays only at Tortoni’s.  This wealth of masculine vigor counted for much in du Bousquier’s relations with others.  And yet in him, as in the chevalier, symptoms appeared which contrasted oddly with the general aspect of their persons.  The late purveyor had not the voice of his muscles.  We do not mean that his voice was a mere thread, such as we sometimes hear issuing from the mouth of these walruses; on the contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw cutting into soft and moistened wood,—­the voice of a worn-out speculator.

In spite of the claims which the enmity of the First Consul gave Monsieur du Bousquier to enter the royalist society of the province, he was not received in the seven or eight families who composed the faubourg Saint-Germain of Alencon, among whom the Chevalier de Valois was welcome.  He had offered himself in marriage, through her notary, to Mademoiselle Armande, sister of the most distinguished noble in the town; to which offer he received a refusal.  He consoled himself as best he could in the society of a dozen rich families, former manufacturers of the old point d’Alencon, owners of pastures and cattle, or merchants doing a wholesale business in linen, among whom, as he hoped, he might find a wealthy wife.  In fact, all his hopes now converged to the perspective of a fortunate marriage.  He was not without a certain financial ability, which many persons used to their profit.  Like a ruined gambler who advises neophytes, he pointed out enterprises and speculations, together with the means and chances of conducting them.  He was thought a good administrator, and it was often a question of making him mayor of Alencon; but the memory of his underhand jobbery still clung to him, and he was never received at the prefecture.  All the succeeding governments, even that of the Hundred Days, refused to appoint him mayor of Alencon,—­a place he coveted, which, could he have had it, would, he thought, have won him the hand of a certain old maid on whom his matrimonial views now turned.

Du Bousquier’s aversion to the Imperial government had thrown him at first into the royalist circles of Alencon, where he remained in spite of the rebuffs he received there; but when, after the first return of the Bourbons, he was still excluded from the prefecture, that mortification inspired him with a hatred as deep as it was secret against the royalists.  He now returned to his old opinions, and became the leader of the liberal party in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior.  Du Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently, but inexhaustible.  His hatred was that of a negro, so peaceful that it deceived the enemy.  His vengeance, brooded over for fifteen years, was as yet satisfied by no victory, not even that of July, 1830.