Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court, feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is somewhat blotched as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own person the majesty of a court whose decrees are recorded in her father’s pothooks. She takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a ramrod, poses for a person of consideration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in doing that than in hiding her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, however, incontestable when we glance at the flower-bedecked cap she wears, at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her choice; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there were no Madame Latournelle? All these absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has never been out of Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she proclaims herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates her father, and adores her husband. Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of her “dot” in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected him had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty wife. The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to himself that a woman’s beauty is soon past and gone to a husband. As to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in baptism his Norman name of “Exupere,” Madame Latournelle is still so surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five years and seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary, with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. “How handsome he is, that son of mine!” she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. “He is like you,” Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, “What horrid weather!” This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been the chaperone of the young girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now plotting