Honoré de Balzac

“ Sharp as was the glance of the eye, still sharper were the gestures and words. “Zélie, obliged to have a will for two, had always had enough for three,” Goupil used to say, and he called attention to the successive reigns of three tidy young postilions, each of whom had been set up by Zélie after seven years’ service. And so the malicious clerk called them Postilion I., Postilion II. and Postilion III. But the small amount of influence exercised by these young men in the house, and their perfect obedience proved that Zélie had been purely and simply interested in steady, good fellows. ”

“ The postmaster had forgotten the enigma contained in his son’s letter, to hurry to the market place; for, if the doctor was in the church to read the ordinary of the mass, it was a question of losing two hundred and fifty thousand francs. It must be confessed, the fears of the heirs appealed to the strongest and most legitimate of social sentiments, family interest.
“Well, Monsieur Minoret,” said the Mayor—once a miller who had become a Royalist, a Levrault-Crémière,—“when the devil was old, the devil a monk would be. They say your uncle is one of us.” ”

“ Obliged, by giving her arm to her godfather, to hold her prayer-book in her right hand and her umbrella in the other, Ursule was then displaying the innate grace that graceful women show in performing all the fastidious details belonging to a woman’s charming calling. ”

“ She belonged to that class of old women whose dress revives the spirit of the last century, who wear violet gowns, with flat sleeves and cut in a fashion which is only seen in the portraits of Madame Lebrun; they wear black lace mantles, and old-fashioned hats in keeping with their slow, solemn step; one would think they were always walking with their hoops, and that they still felt them round them, like those who have had an arm cut off sometimes move the hand that is lost ”

“ His yearly expenditure, that all Nemours could reckon, never exceeded eighteen hundred francs a year. Like all old men, his needs in linen, booting and clothes were almost nothing. Every six months, he made a journey to Paris, doubtless to receive and himself invest his income. During fifteen years, he did not say one word that related to his affairs. His trust in Bongrand came very late; it was only after the Revolution of 1830, that he unfolded his schemes to him. Such were the only things in the doctor’s life then known to the bourgeoisie and his heirs. ”

“ Ursule, according to Madame Massin’s anticipations, was the bête-noire of the heirs, their sword of Damocles, and this remark, “Bah! those that live will see!” Madame Crémière’s favorite conclusion, was enough to show that they wished her more harm than good.
The tax-gatherer and the clerk, both poor compared to the postmaster, had often, by way of conversation, estimated the doctor’s inheritance. Whilst walking along the canal or on the road, if they saw their uncle coming, they would look at each other piteously. ”

“ With his arms crossed on his chest, this tall, gaunt old man, standing in an attitude expressive of the omnipotence of his faculties and something immovable in his faith, never ceased contemplating the altar with a humble look, revived by hope, refusing to look at his nephew’s wife, planted almost in front of him as if to reproach him with this return to God. ”

“ Just as the heirs and the notary were about to cross the square on their way to the post-house, the sound of a diligence arriving full tilt at the office, which was a few steps from the church, at the top of the Grand’Rue, made a tremendous noise.
“Bless my soul! I am like you, Minoret, I am forgetting Désiré,” said Zélie. “Let us go and see him get down; he is almost a barrister, and it is a matter that concerns him.”
The arrival of a stage coach is always a distraction; but, when it is late, some incident is to be expected ”

“ At the end of twelve years, twelve thousand francs saved every year gives one hundred and forty-four thousand francs, and the compound interest produces at least one hundred thousand francs; but, as he must have made several good speculations through the advice of his notary at Paris, and that, up to 1822, he must have invested at eight and at seven and a half in the State, the old man now turns over about four hundred thousand francs, besides his fourteen thousand francs income from the five per cents, now at one hundred and sixteen. ”

“ The deist is an atheist without his obligations. Old Minoret had this sort of a forehead, but furrowed with wrinkles, and which acquired a kind of naïveté from the way in which his silvery hair, drawn back like that of a woman at her toilette, curled in light tufts over his black coat, for he was obstinately dressed, as in his youth, in black silk stockings, gold buckled shoes, paduasoy breeches, a white waistcoat crossed by the black ribbon, and a black coat decorated with the red rosette. ”

“ All have high foreheads, but with a sloping at the top, which betrays a materialistic tendency. You will find these chief characteristics of head and likeness of face in the portraits of all the encyclopedists, the orators of the Gironde, and the men of that time whose religious beliefs were almost nil, who called themselves deists and were atheists. ”

“ The Keeper of the Seals is always glad to find practitioners, and especially people who are well off, to hold this important magistracy. Monsieur Bongrand lived modestly at Nemours upon the fifteen hundred francs from his post, and was thus able to devote his income to his son, who was reading for the bar at Paris, while studying jurisprudence under the famous solicitor Derville. Father Bongrand somewhat resembled an old retired head-clerk ”