Saint Remy entered the office hastily, his hat on, his manner haughty and proud, his eyes half closed, asking, in a very impertinent way, without looking at any one, "The notary? where is he?" "M. Ferrand is busy in his private office," answered the head clerk; "if you will wait a moment, sir, he will receive you." "I wait?" "But, sir----" "There are no 'but, sirs'; go and tell him that M. de Saint Remy is here. I find it very singular that this notary makes me wait in his antechamber; it smells of the stove." "Please to pass into the next room, sir," said the clerk; "I will go at once and inform M. Ferrand." Saint Remy shrugged his shoulders, and followed the head clerk. At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed to him very long, and changed his contempt into rage, Saint Remy was introduced into the cabinet of the notary. Nothing could be more curious than the contrast of these two men, both profound physiognomists, and generally accustomed to judge at a first glance with whom they had to deal. Saint Remy saw Jacques Ferrand for the first time. He was struck with the characteristics of this wan, rigid, impassible face; the expression concealed by the large green spectacles, the head half-hidden in an old black silk cap. The notary was seated before his desk in a leathern arm-chair, beside a broken-down fireplace, filled with ashes, in which were smoking two black stumps. Curtains of green muslin, almost in tatters, suspended from iron rods, concealed the lower part of the windows, and cast into this cabinet, already dark enough, a dull and disagreeable light. Shelves of black wood, filled with labeled boxes; some chairs of cherry wood, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet; a mahogany clock; a yellow, moist, and slippery floor; a ceiling filled with cracks, and, ornamented with garlands of spider-webs; such was the sanctum sanctorum of Jacques Ferrand. The viscount had not advanced two steps, had not said a single word, before the notary who knew him by reputation, hated him already. In the first place, he saw in him, so to speak, a rival in knavery; and, although Ferrand was of a mean and ignoble appearance himself, he did not the less detest in others elegance, grace, and youth; above all when an air deeply insolent accompanied these advantages. The notary ordinarily affected a sort of rudeness, almost gross, toward his clients, who only felt more esteem for him for these boorish manners. He promised himself to redouble this brutality toward the viscount.