As it was 1791 everybody laughed; but a dead silence succeeded the laugh.

“There is nothing laughable in that,” said the housekeeper; “since I have been ill Arsene sleeps in my room.”

In spite of this explanation the Abbe Niseron looked thunderbolts at Madame Niseron and his nephew, thinking they were plotting mischief against him.  The housekeeper died.  Rigou contrived to work up the abbe’s resentment to such a pitch that he made a will disinheriting Jean-Francois Niseron in favor of Arsene Pichard.

In 1823 Rigou, perhaps out of a sense of gratitude, still blew the fire with an air-cane, and left the bellows hanging to the screw.

Madame Niseron, idolizing her daughter, did not long survive her.  Mother and child died in 1794.  The old abbe, too, was dead, and citizen Rigou took charge of Arsene’s affairs by marrying her.  A former convert in the monastery, attached to Rigou as a dog is to his master, became the groom, gardener, herdsman, valet, and steward of the sensual Harpagon.  Arsene Rigou, the daughter, married in 1821 without dowry to the prosecuting-attorney, inheriting something of her mother’s rather vulgar beauty, together with the crafty mind of her father.

Now about sixty-seven years of age, Rigou had never been ill in his life, and nothing seemed able to lessen his aggressively good health.  Tall, lean, with brown circles round his eyes, the lids of which were nearly black, any one who saw him of a morning, when as he dressed he exposed the wrinkled, red, and granulated skin of his neck, would have compared him to a condor,—­all the more because his long nose, sharp at the tip, increased the likeness by its sanguineous color.  His head, partly bald, would have frightened phrenologists by the shape of its skull, which was like an ass’s backbone, an indication of despotic will.  His grayish eyes, half-covered by filmy, red-veined lids, were predestined to aid hypocrisy.  Two scanty locks of hair of an undecided color overhung the large ears, which were long and without rim, a sure sign of cruelty, but cruelty of the moral nature only, unless where it means actual insanity.  The mouth, very broad, with thin lips, indicated a sturdy eater and a determined drinker by the drop of its corners, which turned downward like two commas, from which drooled gravy when he ate and saliva when he talked.  Heliogabalus must have been like this.

His dress, which never varied, consisted of a long blue surtout with a military collar, a black cravat, with waistcoat and trousers of black cloth.  His shoes, very thick soled, had iron nails outside, and inside woollen linings knit by his wife in the winter evenings.  Annette and her mistress also knit the master’s stockings.  Rigou’s name was Gregoire.

Though this sketch gives some idea of the man’s character, no one can imagine the point to which, in his private and unthwarted life, the ex-Benedictine had pushed the science of selfishness, good living, and sensuality.  In the first place, he dined alone, waited upon by his wife and Annette, who themselves dined with Jean in the kitchen, while the master digested his meal and disposed of his wine as he read “the news.”