“I’ll go and see what it is,” she said to Thuillier, whose anxiety she noticed at once. “What is the matter?” she said to the servant as soon as she reached the scene of action.
“Here’s a gentleman who wants to come in, and says that no one is ever dining at eight o’clock at night.”
“But who are you, monsieur?” said Brigitte, addressing an old man very oddly dressed, whose eyes were protected by a green shade.
“Madame, I am neither a beggar nor a vagabond,” replied the old man, in stentorian tones; “my name is Picot, professor of mathematics.”
“Rue du Val-de-Grace?” asked Brigitte.
“Yes, madame,—No. 9, next to the print-shop.”
“Come in, monsieur, come in; we shall be only too happy to receive you,” cried Thuillier, who, on hearing the name, had hurried out to meet the savant.
“Hein! you scamp,” said the learned man, turning upon the man-servant, who had retired, seeing that the matter was being settled amicably, “I told you I should get in.”
Pere Picot was a tall old man, with an angular, stern face, who, despite the corrective of a blond wig with heavy curls, and that of the pacific green shade we have already mentioned, expressed on his large features, upon which the fury of study had produced a surface of leaden pallor, a snappish and quarrelsome disposition. Of this he had already given proof before entering the dining-room, where every one now rose to receive him.
His costume consisted of a huge frock-coat, something between a paletot and a dressing-gown, between which an immense waistcoat of iron-gray cloth, fastened from the throat to the pit of the stomach with two rows of buttons, hussar fashion, formed a sort of buckler. The trousers, though October was nearing its close, were made of black lasting, and gave testimony to long service by the projection of a darn on the otherwise polished surface covering the knees, the polish being produced by the rubbing of the hands upon those parts. But, in broad daylight, the feature of the old savant’s appearance which struck the eye most vividly was a pair of Patagonian feet, imprisoned in slippers of beaver cloth, the which, moulded upon the mountainous elevations of gigantic bunions, made the spectator think, involuntarily, of the back of a dromedary or an advanced case of elephantiasis.