The tabellion,—­he called himself “tabellion,” petty notary, and keeper of notes (making fun of his calling in order to seem above it), —­the tabellion was on terms of spoken gallantry with Madame Soudry, who had a weakness for Lupin, though he was blond and wore spectacles.  Hitherto the late Cochet had loved none but dark men, with moustachios and hairy hands, of the Alcides type.  But she made an exception in favor of Lupin on account of his elegance, and, moreover, because she thought her glory at Soulanges was not complete without an adorer; but, to Soudry’s despair, the queen’s adorers never carried their adoration so far as to threaten his rights.

Lupin had married an heiress in wooden shoes and blue woollen stockings, the only daughter of a salt-dealer, who made his money during the Revolution,—­a period when contraband salt-traders made enormous profits by reason of the reaction that set in against the gabelle.  He prudently left his wife at home, where Bebelle, as he called her, was supported under his absence by a platonic passion for a handsome clerk who had no other means than his salary,—­a young man named Bonnac, belonging to the second-class society, where he played the same role that his master, the notary, played in the first.

Madame Lupin, a woman without any education whatever, appeared on great occasions only, under the form of an enormous Burgundian barrel dressed in velvet and surmounted by a little head sunken in shoulders of a questionable color.  No efforts could retain her waist-belt in its natural place.  “Bebelle” candidly admitted that prudence forbade her wearing corsets.  The imagination of a poet or, better still, that of an inventor, could not have found on Bebelle’s back the slightest trace of that seductive sinuosity which the vertebrae of all women who are women usually produce.  Bebelle, round as a tortoise, belonged to the genus of invertebrate females.  This alarming development of cellular tissue no doubt reassured Lupin on the subject of the platonic passion of his fat wife, whom he boldly called Bebelle without raising a laugh.

“Your wife, what is she?” said Sarcus the rich, one day, when unable to digest the fatal word “superannuated,” applied to a piece of furniture he had just bought at a bargain.

“My wife is not like yours,” replied Lupin; “she is not defined as yet.”

Beneath his rosy exterior the notary possessed a subtle mind, and he had the sense to say nothing about his property, which was fully as large as that of Rigou.

Monsieur Lupin’s son, Amaury, was a great trouble to his father.  An only son, and one of the Don Juans of the valley, he utterly refused to follow the paternal profession.  He took advantage of his position as only son to bleed the strong-box cruelly, without, however, exhausting the patience of his father, who would say after every escapade, “Well, I was like that in my young days.”  Amaury never came to Madame Soudry’s; he said she bored