We have already described the handsome appearance, elegance of style, and aristocratical demeanour of M. de Saint-Remy, when he was on his way to the farm of Arnouville (the estate of Madame de Lucenay), where he had found a retreat from the pursuit of the bailiffs, Malicorne and Bourdin. The viscount, who entered unceremoniously into the office, with his hat on his head, a haughty and disdainful look, and his eyes half closed, asked, with an air of extreme superciliousness, and without looking at anybody: "Where is the notary?" "M. Ferrand is engaged in his private room," said the chief clerk. "If you will please to wait a moment, sir, he will see you." "What do you mean by wait a moment?" "Why, sir--" "There is no why in the case, sir. Go and tell him that M. de Saint-Remy is here; and I am much surprised that this notary should make me dance attendance in his waiting-room. It is really most annoying." "Will you walk into this side room, sir?" said the chief clerk, "and I will inform M. Ferrand this instant." M. de Saint-Remy shrugged his shoulders, and followed the head clerk. At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed very tedious to him, and which converted his spleen into anger, the viscount was introduced into the notary's private apartment. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between these two men, both of them profound physiognomists, and habituated to judge at a glance of the persons with whom they had business. M. de Saint-Remy saw Jacques Ferrand for the first time, and was struck with the expression of his pallid, harsh, and impassive features,--the look concealed by the large green spectacles; the skull half hid beneath an old black silk cap. The notary was seated at his writing-desk, in a leathern armchair, beside a low fireplace, almost choked up with ashes, and in which were two black and smoking logs of wood. Curtains of green cotton, almost in rags, hung on small iron rings at the windows, and, concealing the lower window-panes, threw over the room, which was naturally dark, a livid and unpleasant hue. Shelves of black wood were filled with deed-boxes, all duly labelled. Some cherry-wood chairs, covered with threadbare Utrecht velvet; a clock in a mahogany case; a floor yellow, damp, and chilling; a ceiling full of cracks, and festooned with spiders' webs,--such was the _sanctum sanctorum_ of M. Jacques Ferrand. Hardly had the viscount made two steps into his cabinet, or spoken a word, than the notary, who knew him by reputation, conceived an intense antipathy towards him. In the first place, he saw in him, if we may say so, a rival in rogueries; and then he hated elegance, grace, and youth in other persons, and more especially when these advantages were attended with an air of insolent superiority. The notary usually assumed a tone of rude and almost coarse abruptness with his clients, who liked him the better for being in behaviour like a boor of the Danube. He made up his mind to double this