The Count of Monte Cristo

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down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering,
"These papers become more and more stupid every day." A moment after,
a carriage stopped before the door, and the servant announced M. Lucien
Debray. A tall young man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin
and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with beautifully carved gold
buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell eye-glass suspended by a
silken thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic
muscles, he fixed in his eye, entered, with a half-official air, without
smiling or speaking. "Good-morning, Lucien, good-morning," said Albert;
"your punctuality really alarms me. What do I say? punctuality! You,
whom I expected last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the time
fixed was half-past! Has the ministry resigned?"

"No, my dear fellow," returned the young man, seating himself on the
divan; "reassure yourself; we are tottering always, but we never fall,
and I begin to believe that we shall pass into a state of immobility,
and then the affairs of the Peninsula will completely consolidate us."