know?' One might have said the same of the baron, as well as his brother: 'What did they know?' Their prejudices and their mannerisms covered them as though with a varnish preventing all contact between them and the outside world. Marie-Antoinette's famous 'If they have no bread, let them eat cake' has always been considered an odious remark. But perhaps it was simply that Marie-Antoinette believed that cake was no more expensive than bread. M. Octave thought Papon was robbing him when, after an afternoon's shopping all over Paris, he claimed to have spent four francs on trams. Four francs on trams — impossible! On top of all this, having achieved an important position through influence, the baron felt justified in regarding himself as a self-made man. [ In English in the original. ] He pompously declared that he had 'risen from nothing'. The human mind is endlessly ingenious in self-flattery.
In everything he did M. Coëtquidan was ruled by principles. In fact he would often get marvellously tangled up in them. For example, when he did something which bored him, he thought he was doing his duty. He would even say: 'If I didn't do what bores me, I would do nothing at all.' One could use up a whole ink-well of deep thoughts on this.
M. de Coëtquidan, then, was sitting 'reading' the Daily Mail when Papon announced M. de Coantré. M. de Coantré came in, shook hands with his uncle, and bowed a few inches too low, like a steward.
It was quite a different M. de Coantré from the one we saw in rags at the beginning of this narrative. He was wearing a dark grey suit, of good material and extremely clean. This suit dated from 1905 and, because of its cut, made an old-fashioned effect which was not, however, out of place on a man of his age. What was indeed extraordinary, if not ridiculous, was the height of his stiff collar, of a shape that had also gone out of fashion twenty years earlier, and below this collar a black silk stock with a stag's-tooth pin. His starched cuffs, cracked with use like an old face with wrinkles, were detachable. But it was perhaps his boots which cried out most eloquently their date of birth — 1900 to 1905. They were buttoned boots, square-toed, and immensely long, curling upwards like certain kinds of medieval footwear. Like the suit, they were of excellent quality and almost as good as new despite their twenty years, since M. de Coantré wore them only two or three times a year and looked after them with the greatest care.
M. de Coantré had left in the hall a short velvet-collared overcoat (of a type known as a 'bum-freezer') and a silver-handled cane which was also very 1900. But, in accordance with the conventions of his youth, he had kept his bowler hat in his hand, as well as a pair of gloves which, now that he was seated, he had carefully placed in the hollow rim of his hat, for this pair of gloves was composed of two identical ones, and M. de Coantré assumed that this was not noticeable when he held them in his hand. They were mourning gloves, for M. de Coantré, during the past twenty years, had had no occasion to wear gloves except at family funerals. And they had that pitiful flatness, that lifeless appearance of gloves that have never been worn.
No sooner was M. de Coantré seated than the baron, with the purposeful air he always showed in conference, as though to say 'Gentlemen, let us stick to the point' (a quite artificial purposefulness by which he concealed his natural timidity), switched the conversation in the direction he wanted. Pointing to the Daily Mail, he said in a stilted voice:
'Have you read Herriot's splendid speech?'
M. de Coantré knew perfectly well what his uncle was up to. He, too, tried to switch.
'I'm afraid not. With all the worries I've got at the moment I've hardly the time.'
'You should buy Le Temps on your way home. It's well worth reading. Absolutely first-rate.'
'What a dream world he lives in,' thought M. de Coantré, 'the dream world of people
In everything he did M. Coëtquidan was ruled by principles. In fact he would often get marvellously tangled up in them. For example, when he did something which bored him, he thought he was doing his duty. He would even say: 'If I didn't do what bores me, I would do nothing at all.' One could use up a whole ink-well of deep thoughts on this.
M. de Coëtquidan, then, was sitting 'reading' the Daily Mail when Papon announced M. de Coantré. M. de Coantré came in, shook hands with his uncle, and bowed a few inches too low, like a steward.
It was quite a different M. de Coantré from the one we saw in rags at the beginning of this narrative. He was wearing a dark grey suit, of good material and extremely clean. This suit dated from 1905 and, because of its cut, made an old-fashioned effect which was not, however, out of place on a man of his age. What was indeed extraordinary, if not ridiculous, was the height of his stiff collar, of a shape that had also gone out of fashion twenty years earlier, and below this collar a black silk stock with a stag's-tooth pin. His starched cuffs, cracked with use like an old face with wrinkles, were detachable. But it was perhaps his boots which cried out most eloquently their date of birth — 1900 to 1905. They were buttoned boots, square-toed, and immensely long, curling upwards like certain kinds of medieval footwear. Like the suit, they were of excellent quality and almost as good as new despite their twenty years, since M. de Coantré wore them only two or three times a year and looked after them with the greatest care.
M. de Coantré had left in the hall a short velvet-collared overcoat (of a type known as a 'bum-freezer') and a silver-handled cane which was also very 1900. But, in accordance with the conventions of his youth, he had kept his bowler hat in his hand, as well as a pair of gloves which, now that he was seated, he had carefully placed in the hollow rim of his hat, for this pair of gloves was composed of two identical ones, and M. de Coantré assumed that this was not noticeable when he held them in his hand. They were mourning gloves, for M. de Coantré, during the past twenty years, had had no occasion to wear gloves except at family funerals. And they had that pitiful flatness, that lifeless appearance of gloves that have never been worn.
No sooner was M. de Coantré seated than the baron, with the purposeful air he always showed in conference, as though to say 'Gentlemen, let us stick to the point' (a quite artificial purposefulness by which he concealed his natural timidity), switched the conversation in the direction he wanted. Pointing to the Daily Mail, he said in a stilted voice:
'Have you read Herriot's splendid speech?'
M. de Coantré knew perfectly well what his uncle was up to. He, too, tried to switch.
'I'm afraid not. With all the worries I've got at the moment I've hardly the time.'
'You should buy Le Temps on your way home. It's well worth reading. Absolutely first-rate.'
'What a dream world he lives in,' thought M. de Coantré, 'the dream world of people
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