Book II

said; he did not add: “I am too old,” but: “I am too poor.” He said: “If I were not ruined⁠—Héée!” All he had left, in fact, was an income of about fifteen thousand francs. His dream was to come into an inheritance and to have a hundred thousand livres income for mistresses. He did not belong, as the reader will perceive, to that puny variety of octogenaries who, like M. de Voltaire, have been dying all their life; his was no longevity of a cracked pot; this jovial old man had always had good health. He was superficial, rapid, easily angered. He flew into a passion at everything, generally quite contrary to all reason. When contradicted, he raised his cane; he beat people as he had done in the great century. He had a daughter over fifty years of age, and unmarried, whom he chastised severely with his tongue, when in a rage, and whom he would have liked to whip. She seemed to him to be eight years old. He boxed his servants’ ears soundly, and said: “Ah! carogne!” One of his oaths was: “By the pantoufloche of the pantouflochade !” He had singular freaks of tranquillity; he had himself shaved every day by a barber who had been