Madame Minoret was as clever as she was grasping; and it was a favorite remark in the whole town, "Where would Minoret-Levrault be without his wife ?" "When you know what has happened," replied the post master, "you'll be over the traces yourself." "What is it ?" "Ursula has taken the doctor to mass." Zelie's pupils dilated; she stood for a moment yellow with anger, then, crying out, "I'll see it before I believe it!" she rushed into the church.

The service had reached the Elevation.

The stillness of the worshippers enabled her to look along each row of chairs and benches as she went up the aisle beside the chapels to Ursula's place, where she saw old Minoret standing with bared head.
If you recall the heads of Barbe-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Morellet, Helvetius, or Frederick the Great, you will see the exact image of Doctor Minoret, whose green old age resembled that of those celebrated personages.

Their heads coined in the same mint (for each had the characteristics of a medal) showed a stern and quasi-puritan profile, cold tones, a mathematical brain, a certain narrowness about the features, shrewd eyes, grave lips, and a something that was surely aristocratic--less perhaps in sentiment than in habit, more in the ideas than in the character.

All men of this stamp have high brows retreating at the summit, the sigh of a tendency to materialism.