Under the eyes of little Latournelle, who went with him to various houses, Germain made a good deal of talk about the secretary, rejecting two or three because there was no suitable room for Monsieur de La Briere.
"Monsieur le baron," he said to the notary, "makes his secretary quite his best friend.

Ah! I should be well scolded if Monsieur de La Briere was not as well treated as monsieur le baron himself; and after all, you know, Monsieur de La Briere is a lawyer in my master's court." Germain never appeared in public unless punctiliously dressed in black, with spotless gloves, well-polished boots, and otherwise as well apparelled as a lawyer.

Imagine the effect he produced in Havre, and the idea people took of the great poet from this sample of him! The valet of a man of wit and intellect ends by getting a little wit and intellect himself which has rubbed off from his master.

Germain did not overplay his part; he was simple and good-humored, as Canalis had instructed him to be.

Poor La Briere was in blissful ignorance of the harm Germain was doing to his prospects, and the depreciation his consent to the arrangement had brought upon him; it is, however, true that some inkling of the state of things rose to Modeste's ears from these lower regions.
Canalis had arranged to bring his secretary in his own carriage, and Ernest's unsuspicious nature did not perceive that he was putting himself in a false position until too late to remedy it.