The electors sat staring after her with gaping mouths, and Mouredus lit a cigar, and said: "Just listen to me, Monsieur Rulhiere; it was very kind of you to invite us here, to your little quiet establishment, but to speak to you frankly, I should not, in your place, wrong my lawful wife for such a stuck-up piece of goods as this one is." "The captain is quite right," Roquetton the notary opined; "Madame Rulhiere, the lawful Madame Rulhiere, is much more amiable, and altogether nicer. You are a scoundrel to deceive her; but when may we hope to see her?" And with a paternal grimace, he added: "But do not be uneasy; we will all hold our tongue; it would be too sad if she were to find it out." THE UPSTART You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like the type of a happy man, with his fat cheeks that are the color of ripe apples, his small, reddish moustache, turned up over his thick lips, with his prominent eyes, which never know any emotion or sorrow, which remind one of the calm eyes of cows and oxen, and his long back fixed onto two little wriggling, crooked legs, which obtained for him the nickname of corkscrew from some nymph of the ballet. Dupontel, who had taken the trouble to be born, but not like the grand seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made fun of once upon a time, was ballasted with a respectable number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir of a house that had sold household utensils and appliances for over a century. Naturally, like every other upstart who respects himself, he wished to appear something, to play at being a clubman, and also to play to the gallery, because he had been educated at Vangirard and knew a little English; because he had gone through his voluntary service in the army for twelve months[19] at Rouen; because he was a tolerable singer, could drive four-in-hands, and play lawn-tennis. [Footnote 19: Although, in France, as in Germany, military service is compulsory, men are allowed to serve in both countries as _one-year volunteers_; they enjoy certain privileges, find their own uniform, &c., and it, of course, entails considerable expense.--TRANSLATOR.] Always studiedly well-dressed, too correct in every way, copying his way of speaking, his hats and his trousers from the three or four snobs who set the fashion, reproducing other people's witticisms, learning anecdotes and jokes by heart, like a lesson, to use them again at small parties, constantly laughing, without knowing why his friends burst into roars of merriment, and was in the habit of keeping pretty girls for the pleasure of his best friends. Of course he was a perfect fool, but after all, a capital fellow, to whom it was only right to extend a good deal of indulgence.