This unhappy woman was Foulon’s daughter; towards her he had never shown the least paternal love. Possibly it was not in his nature to exhibit love. She had never been beautiful, having inherited her father’s hatchet-face; in addition to her plainness was her colour; her complexion was of an ashen blue-grey, the result of having taken much nitrate of silver medicinally. Her plainness and her complexion being neither of them attractive, Berthier made no pretence of loving her, and Foulon did not exact it of him. Berthier, the Intendant, or Sheriff of Paris, a man of humble extraction, being descended from a race of provincial attorneys, had worked his way into prominence and power by his shrewdness and unscrupulousness. He had married Foulon’s daughter for the sake of some money she inherited from her mother, but chiefly in hopes of one day possessing his father-in-law’s large fortune. Foulon had begun his career as an intendant of the army, and had amassed immense wealth by victualling badly and charging high. The soldiers fasted or fed on garbage, that Foulon might fatten. He was both a contractor for the army, and one of the commission appointed to watch and check the contractors. Madame Berthier was naturally a woman of a warm and affectionate disposition; but meeting with no response from her husband or her father, and, through repeated humiliations to which she was subjected by her profligate husband, all that warmth had accumulated into a fire which burned in her bosom, consuming her, disturbing her intellect, and wrecking her constitution. She was a tall thin woman, dressed wholly in black. Her hair was grey, a silvery grey, contrasting painfully with the blue-grey of her face. Her large hazel eyes were clear and bright, but their brilliance was unnatural, and impressed a stranger with a conviction that they betokened a mental condition on the borders of insanity. Her sitting-room was quite square, with a window to the east, another to the west, and a third to the south. It was painted yellow throughout; the curtains were of orange damask, and a patch of yellow rug occupied the centre of the polished floor. In the midst of this chamber sat Madame Berthier, making cat’s cradles, her favourite amusement, and one with which she would occupy herself during long hours of loneliness. By constant practice she was able to accomplish all the usual changes with the threads very rapidly, and she was frequently puzzling out new arrangements with an interest and application completely engrossing.