Add to this that a son had been born to him, in whom he already discerned a reflection of his own disposition, and it cannot fail to be understood how this man would congratulate himself daily for having taken life, as he had done, with complete submission to all the average conditions of the social class in which he had been born. Did these various reflections pass through the mind of the third individual--the man whom Alfred Chazel had called Armand, as he contemplated the conjugal tableau through the smoke from a Russian cigarette which he had just lighted--a liberty which revealed the extent of his intimacy with the family? The same contrast which separated Alfred from Helen separated him also from Armand. The latter looked at first younger than his age, though he too had passed his thirty-second year. If Alfred's carelessly-worn coat revealed rather the leanness and disproportion of his body, the frock of the Baron de Querne--such was Armand's family-name--fitted close to the shoulders and bust of a man, small but robust, and evidently devoted to fencing, riding, tennis, and all the sporting habits which the youths of the richer classes have contracted in imitation of the English, now that political careers--diplomacy, the Council of State, and the Audit Office--are denied them by their real or assumed opinions. The quiet jewellery with which the young baron was adorned, the delicacy of his hands and feet, and everything in his appearance, from his cravat and his collar to the curls in his dark hair, and to the turn of his moustache, drawn out over a somewhat contemptuous lip, disclosed that deep attention to the toilet which assumes the lengthened leisure of an idle life. But what preserved De Querne from the commonplaceness usual to men who are visibly occupied with the trifles of masculine fashion was a look, in a generally immovable face, of peculiar keenness and unrest. This look, which was not at all like that of a young man, contradicted the remainder of his person to the extent of imparting an appearance of strangeness to one who looked in this way, although a desire to evade remark, and to be above all things correct, evidently influenced his mode of dress.