At the hour when La Briere was inquiring about the father of his
beloved from the head of the house of Mongenod, and getting
information that might be useful to him in his strange position, a
scene was taking place in Canalis's study which the ex-lieutenant's
hasty departure from Havre may have led the reader to foresee.
Like a true soldier of the imperial school, Dumay, whose Breton blood
had boiled all the way to Paris, considered a poet to be a poor stick
of a fellow, of no consequence whatever,--a buffoon addicted to
choruses, living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white
at every seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and
linen that was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew more about ink
than soap; in short, one who looked always as if he had tumbled from
the moon, except when scribbling at a desk, like Butscha. But the
seething of the Breton's heart and brain received a violent
application of cold water when he entered the courtyard of the pretty
house occupied by the poet and saw a groom washing a carriage, and
also, through the windows of a handsome dining-room, a valet dressed
like a banker, to whom the groom referred him, and who answered,
looking the stranger over from head to foot, that Monsieur le baron
was not visible.
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