But he has grown tired of his profession and is anxious to find some place that would bring him from eight to twelve hundred francs at the most.

He does not care so much about the salary, what he desires is the consideration that attaches to such a place.

As he was always late, he requested that the courses be brought up again from the kitchen, and if he did not like them, he would send them back untouched; he sneezed and expectorated and rocked his chair and hummed and leaned his elbows on the table and picked his teeth.
Everybody respects him, the waitress admires everything he says, and is, I am sure, in love with him.

The high opinion he has of himself shows in his smile, his speech, his gestures, his silence, and in his way of wearing his hair; it emanates from his entire obnoxious personality.
Opposite to us sat a grey-haired, plump man with red hands and thick, moist lips, who looked at us so persistently and annoyingly, while he masticated his food, that we felt like throwing the carafes at him.

The other guests were insignificant and only contributed to the picture.
One evening the conversation fell upon a woman of the environs who had left her husband and gone to America with her lover, and who, the previous week, and passed through Saint-Pol on her way home, and had stopped at the inn.