Sarcasm--the low, cowardly, despicable sarcasm of the dregs of the people--was the beginning and the end of this youth. He was a perfect type of those Parisians who bear upon their faces the mocking scepticism of the great city of _blague_ in which they are born. The smile, the shrewdness and the mischief of the Parisian physiognomy were always mocking and impertinent in him. Jupillon's smile had the jovial expression imparted by a wicked mouth, a mouth that was almost cruel at the corners of the lips, which curled upward and were always twitching nervously. His face was pale with the pallor that nitric acid strong enough to eat copper gives to the complexion, and in his sharp, pert, bold features were mingled bravado, energy, recklessness, intelligence, impudence and all sorts of rascally expressions, softened, at certain times, by a cat-like, wheedling air. His trade of glove-cutter--he had taken up with that trade after two or three unsuccessful trials as an apprentice in other crafts--the habit of working in the shop-windows, of being on exhibition to the passers-by, had given to his whole person the self-assurance and the dandified airs of a _poseur_. Sitting in the work-shop on the street, with his white shirt, his little black cravat _a la Colin_, and his skin-tight pantaloons, he had adopted an awkward air of nonchalance, the pretentious carriage and _canaille_ affectations of the workman who knows he is being stared at. And various little refinements of doubtful taste, the parting of the hair in the middle and brushing it down over the temples, the low shirt collars that left the whole neck bare, the striving after the coquettish effects that properly belong to the other sex, gave him an uncertain appearance, which was made even more ambiguous by his beardless face, marred only by a faint suggestion of a moustache, and his sexless features to which passion and ill-temper imparted all the evil quality of a shrewish woman's face. But in Germinie's eyes all these airs and this Jupillon style were of the highest distinction. Thus constituted, with nothing lovable about him and incapable of a genuine attachment even through his passions, Jupillon was greatly embarrassed and bored by this adoration which became intoxicated with itself, and waxed greater day by day. Germinie wearied him to death. She seemed to him absurd in her humiliation, and laughable in her devotion. He was weary, disgusted, worn out with her. He had had enough of her love, enough of her person. And he had no hesitation about cutting loose from her, without charity or pity. He ran away from her. He failed to keep the appointments she made. He pretended that he was kept away by accident, by errands to be done, by a pressure of work. At night, she waited for him and he did not come; she supposed that he was detained by business: in fact he was at some low billiard hall, or at some ball at the barrier. XVI