The rôle of lay confessor, which the lawyer is called upon to play in a family, had placed M. Grenu in possession of many of the Rivières' household secrets. He had been unaware of very few of Raoul's escapades or Mme. Rivière's sorrows. To the former he had lent a sympathetic ear, to the latter an ear equally complacent. As an advisor of the wife he appreciated her virtues; as the companion of Raoul, he appreciated the latter's vices (they were virtues too, Gallic virtues); and it was said that he was not above joining in some of Raoul's select parties. M. Grenu was a little grizzled man in his sixties, delicate in appearance, with a fresh complexion, excessively correct, malicious and smooth-tongued, a good fellow, an amusing actor; he liked to tell stories and would begin in a low, faint voice so that people would take pains to listen to him, a voice so soft that it seemed to be dying; then, when he had won from the audience a pitying silence, he would gradually spread out into a sonorous volume of sound that a big clarinet might have envied, and he would not abandon the stop till the final note when he had finished his song. He was a lawyer of the old school, but a weak man, attracted by the new ways, a good paterfamilias, an old-fashioned bourgeois, proud of being able to count a number of actresses, high livers and light women among his clientele, and it was his hobby to speak of himself as old and even to act so, exaggeratedly; but he was very much afraid of being taken at his word and in secret applied himself ardently to showing that he was livelier than all these young folks and could leave them far behind.