The Golden Lion of Granpere | Page 3

once be introduced to the landlord, and informed at
the same time that, in so far as he may be interested in this story, he
will have to take up his abode at the Lion d'Or till it be concluded; not
as a guest staying loosely at his inn, but as one who is concerned with
all the innermost affairs of the household. He will not simply eat his
plate of soup, and drink his glass of wine, and pass on, knowing and
caring more for the servant than for the servant's master, but he must
content himself to sit at the landlord's table, to converse very frequently
with the landlord's wife, to become very intimate with the landlord's

son--whether on loving or on unloving terms shall be left entirely to
himself--and to throw himself, with the sympathy of old friendship,
into all the troubles and all the joys of the landlord's niece. If the reader
be one who cannot take such a journey, and pass a month or two
without the society of persons whom he would define as ladies and
gentlemen, he had better be warned at once, and move on, not setting
foot within the Lion d'Or at Granpere.
Michel Voss, the landlord, in person was at this time a tall, stout, active,
and very handsome man, about fifty years of age. As his son was
already twenty-five--and was known to be so throughout the
commune--people were sure that Michel Voss was fifty or thereabouts;
but there was very little in his appearance to indicate so many years. He
was fat and burly to be sure; but then he was not fat to lethargy, or
burly with any sign of slowness. There was still the spring of youth in
his footstep, and when there was some weight to be lifted, some heavy
timber to be thrust here or there, some huge lumbering vehicle to be
hoisted in or out, there was no arm about the place so strong as that of
the master. His short, dark, curly hair--that was always kept clipped
round his head--was beginning to show a tinge of gray, but the huge
moustache on his upper lip was still of a thorough brown, as was also
the small morsel of beard which he wore upon his chin. He had bright
sharp brown eyes, a nose slightly beaked, and a large mouth. He was on
the whole a man of good temper, just withal, and one who loved those
who belonged to him; but he chose to be master in his own house, and
was apt to think that his superior years enabled him to know what
younger people wanted better than they would know themselves. He
was loved in his house and respected in his village; but there was
something in the beak of his nose and the brightness of his eye which
was apt to make those around him afraid of him. And indeed Michel
Voss could lose his temper and become an angry man.
Our landlord had been twice married. By his first wife he had now
living a single son, George Voss, who at the time of our tale had
already reached his twenty-fifth year. George, however, did not at this
time live under his father's roof, having taken service for a time with
the landlady of another inn at Colmar. George Voss was known to be a

clever young man; many in those parts declared that he was much more
so than his father; and when he became clerk at the Poste in Colmar,
and after a year or two had taken into his hands almost the entire
management of that house--so that people began to say that
old-fashioned and wretched as it was, money might still be made
there--people began to say also that Michel Voss had been wrong to
allow his son to leave Granpere. But in truth there had been a few
words between the father and the son; and the two were so like each
other that the father found it difficult to rule, and the son found it
difficult to be ruled.
George Voss was very like his father, with this difference, as he was
often told by the old folk about Granpere, that he would never fill his
father's shoes. He was a smaller man, less tall by a couple of inches,
less broad in proportion across the shoulders, whose arm would never
be so strong, whose leg would never grace a tight stocking with so full
a development. But he had the same eye, bright and brown and very
quick, the same mouth, the same aquiline nose, the same broad
forehead and well-shaped chin, and the same look in his face which
made men know as by instinct that he would sooner command than
obey.