Monsieur Bongrand, the justice of peace, heard of
the pleasure of these evenings and sought admittance to the doctor's
society. Before becoming justice of peace at Nemours he had been for
ten years a solicitor at Melun, where he conducted his own cases,
according to the custom of small towns, where there are no barristers.
He became a widower at forty-five years of age, but felt himself still
too active to lead an idle life; he therefore sought and obtained the
position of justice of peace at Nemours, which became vacant a few
months before the arrival of Doctor Minoret. Monsieur Bongrand lived
modestly on his salary of fifteen hundred francs, in order that he
might devote his private income to his son, who was studying law in
Paris under the famous Derville. He bore some resemblance to a retired
chief of a civil service office; he had the peculiar face of a
bureaucrat, less sallow than pallid, on which public business,
vexations, and disgust leave their imprint,--a face lined by thought,
and also by the continual restraints familiar to those who are trained
not to speak their minds freely.
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