“We are not boobies, and that fellow Roquetton is the most knowing of the lot of us....  Ah!  Monsieur Rulhiere, without any exaggeration, you are the cream of good fellows.”

And with a flushed face, and expanding his chest, he said sonorously: 

“They certainly turn them out very pretty in your part of the country, my little lady!”

Madame Rulhiere, who did not know what to say, had gone up to her husband for protection; but she felt much inclined to go to her own room under some pretext or other, in order to escape from her intolerable task.  She kept her ground, however, during the whole of dinner, which was a noisy, jovial meal, during which the five electors, with their elbows on the table, and their waistcoats unbuttoned, and half drunk, told coarse stories, and swore like troopers.  But as the coffee and the liquors were served in the smoking room, she took leave of her guests in an impatient voice, and went to her own room with the hasty step of an escaped prisoner, who is afraid of being retaken.

The electors sat staring after her with gaping mouths, and Mouredus lit a cigar, and said: 

“Just listen to me, Monsieur Rulhiere; it was very kind of you to invite us here, to your little quiet establishment, but to speak to you frankly, I should not, in your place, wrong my lawful wife for such a stuck-up piece of goods as this one is.”

“The captain is quite right,” Roquetton the notary opined; “Madame Rulhiere, the lawful Madame Rulhiere, is much more amiable, and altogether nicer.  You are a scoundrel to deceive her; but when may we hope to see her?”

And with a paternal grimace, he added: 

“But do not be uneasy; we will all hold our tongue; it would be too sad if she were to find it out.”

THE UPSTART

You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like the type of a happy man, with his fat cheeks that are the color of ripe apples, his small, reddish moustache, turned up over his thick lips, with his prominent eyes, which never know any emotion or sorrow, which remind one of the calm eyes of cows and oxen, and his long back fixed onto two little wriggling, crooked legs, which obtained for him the nickname of corkscrew from some nymph of the ballet.

Dupontel, who had taken the trouble to be born, but not like the grand seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made fun of once upon a time, was ballasted with a respectable number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir of a house that had sold household utensils and appliances for over a century.

Naturally, like every other upstart who respects himself, he wished to appear something, to play at being a clubman, and also to play to the gallery, because he had been educated at Vangirard and knew a little English; because he had gone through his voluntary service in the army for twelve months[19] at Rouen; because he was a tolerable singer, could drive four-in-hands, and play lawn-tennis.