The White Rocks

Excerpt from The White Rocks

The day the cattle fair takes place, No one needs to wash his face.' The Bfilois did not understand at once, being of a slow mind. While his companion was explaining the meaning of the saying, came the notary Tiercet, long, lean and bony, with his impassive face and bleary eyes and little thin nose abruptly tilted. He had the gait of a wading bird furnished with the beak of a bird of prey. He joined the pair without interrupting the conversa tion, being one of those who speak little, hear much and always have the air of ruminating something. A moment after, this conversation, which still turned on the kind of weather they were accustomed to at cattle fairs, was broken into by the syndic, Charles Quartier, a man of portentous dimensions, his red countenance bristling with yellow, hair, blowing like a porpoise, jovial, as he was always, with a joviality, however, that was rather calculated and employed at opportune moments to hide deep designs. He was perspiring all over. While shaking the hands that were tendered to him, he took off his vast straw hat — the first straw hat of the season — disclosing a thick ?eece of tangled hair, yellow as his beard, although a little grizzled, and steeped in sweat. He shouted at them, rolling forth his familiar oath in thunderous Nom de nom! Nom de nom! What infernal weather for the month of April!