“I have just seen Monsieur Beaussier, and he says he would not like to meet him in a dark wood; he saw him in the diligence.”

“He has got hollows over the eyes like a horse, and he laughs like a maniac.”

“The fellow looks as though he were capable of anything; perhaps it’s his fault that his brother, a fine handsome man they tell me, has gone to the bad.  Poor Madame Bridau doesn’t seem as if she were very happy with him.”

“Suppose we take advantage of his being here, and have our portraits painted?”

The result of all these observations, scattered through the town was, naturally, to excite curiosity.  All those who had the right to visit the Hochons resolved to call that very night and examine the Parisians.  The arrival of these two persons in the stagnant town was like the falling of a beam into a community of frogs.

After stowing his mother’s things and his own into the two attic chambers, which he examined as he did so, Joseph took note of the silent house, where the walls, the stair-case, the wood-work, were devoid of decoration and humid with frost, and where there was literally nothing beyond the merest necessaries.  He felt the brusque transition from his poetic Paris to the dumb and arid province; and when, coming downstairs, he chanced to see Monsieur Hochon cutting slices of bread for each person, he understood, for the first time in his life, Moliere’s Harpagon.

“We should have done better to go to an inn,” he said to himself.

The aspect of the dinner confirmed his apprehensions.  After a soup whose watery clearness showed that quantity was more considered than quality, the bouilli was served, ceremoniously garnished with parsley; the vegetables, in a dish by themselves, being counted into the items of the repast.  The bouilli held the place of honor in the middle of the table, accompanied with three other dishes:  hard-boiled eggs on sorrel opposite to the vegetables; then a salad dressed with nut-oil to face little cups of custard, whose flavoring of burnt oats did service as vanilla, which it resembles much as coffee made of chiccory resembles mocha.  Butter and radishes, in two plates, were at each end of the table; pickled gherkins and horse-radish completed the spread, which won Madam Hochon’s approbation.  The good old woman gave a contented little nod when she saw that her husband had done things properly, for the first day at least.  The old man answered with a glance and a shrug of his shoulders, which it was easy to translate into—­

“See the extravagances you force me to commit!”

As soon as Monsieur Hochon had, as it were, slivered the bouilli into slices, about as thick as the sole of a dancing-shoe, that dish was replaced by another, containing three pigeons.  The wine was of the country, vintage 1811.  On a hint from her grandmother, Adolphine had decorated each end of the table with a bunch of flowers.