To this appearance, or rather reality, M. Ferrand attached great importance. In the eyes of the vulgar, carelessness about comfort almost always passes for disinterestedness; dirt, for austerity. Comparing the vast financial luxury of some notaries, or the costly toilets of their wives, to the dull abode of M. Ferrand, so opposed to elegance, expense, or splendour, clients felt a sort of respect for, or rather blind confidence in, a man who, according to his large practice and the fortune attributed to him, could say, like many of his professional brethren, my carriage, my evening party, my country-house, my box at the opera, etc. But, far from this, Jacques Ferrand lived with rigid economy; and thus deposits, investments, powers of attorney, in fact, all matters of trust and business requiring the most scrupulous and recognised integrity, accumulated in his hands. Living thus meanly as he did, the notary lived in the way he liked. He detested the world, show, dearly purchased pleasures; and, even had it been otherwise, he would unhesitatingly have sacrificed his dearest inclinations to the appearances which he found it so profitable to assume. A word or two on the character of the man. He was one of the children of the large family of misers. Misers are generally exhibited in a ridiculous and whimsical light; the worst do not go beyond egotism or harshness. The greater portion increase their fortune by continually investing; some (they are but few) lend at thirty per cent.; the most decided hardly venture any risk with their means; but it is almost an unheard-of thing for a miser to proceed to crime, even murder, in the acquisition of fresh wealth. That is easily accounted for; avarice is especially a negative passion. The miser, in his incessant calculations, thinks more of becoming richer by not disbursing; in tightening around him, more and more, the limits of strict necessity, than he does of enriching himself at the cost of another; he is especially the martyr to preservation. Weak, timid, cunning, distrustful, and, above all, prudent and circumspect, never offensive, indifferent to the ills of his neighbour,--the miser at least never alludes to these ills,--he is, before all and above all, the man of certainty and surety; or, rather, he is only a miser because he believes only in the substantial, the hard gold which he has locked up in his chest. Speculations and loans, on even undoubted security, tempt him but little, for, how improbable soever it may be, they always offer a chance of loss, and he prefers rather to lose the interest of his money than expose his capital. A man so timorous will, therefore, seldom have the savage energy of the wretch who risks the galleys or his neck to lay hands on the wealth of another.