"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 brutality towards M. de Saint-Remy, who, only knowing the notary by report also, expected to find an attorney either familiar or a fool; for the viscount always imagined men of such probity as M. Ferrand had the reputation for, as having an exterior almost ridiculous, but, so far from this, the countenance and appearance of the attorney at law struck the viscount with an undefinable feeling,—half fear, half aversion. Consequently, his own resolute character made M. de Saint-Remy increase his usual impertinence and effrontery. The notary kept his cap on his head, and the viscount did not doff his hat, but exclaimed, as he entered the room, with a loud and imperative tone:
"Pardieu, sir! it is very strange that you should give me the trouble to come here, instead of sending to my house for the money for the bills I accepted from the man Badinot, and for which the fellow has issued execution against me. It is true you tell me that you have also another very important communication to make to me; but then, surely, that is no excuse for making me wait for half an hour in your antechamber: it is really most annoying, sir!"
M. Ferrand, quite unmoved, finished a calculation he was engaged in, wiped his pen methodically in a moist sponge which encircled his inkstand of cracked earthenware, and raised towards the viscount his icy, earthy, flat face, shaded by his spectacles. He looked like a death's head in which the eye-holes had been replaced by large, fixed, staring green eyeballs. After having looked at the viscount for a moment or two, the notary said to him, in a harsh and abrupt tone:
"Where's the money?"
This coolness exasperated M. de Saint-Rémy.
He—he, the idol of the women, the envy of the men, the model of the first society in Paris, the dreaded duellist—produced no effect on a wretched attorney-at-law! It was horrid; and, although he was only tête-à-tête with Jacques Ferrand, his pride revolted.