The Upstart by Guy de Maupassant — Read

You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like the type of a happy man, with his fat cheeks that are the color of ripe apples, his small, reddish moustache, turned up over his thick lips, with his prominent eyes, which never know any emotion or sorrow, which remind one of the calm eyes of cows and oxen, and his long back fixed onto two little wriggling, crooked legs, which obtained for him the nickname of corkscrew from some nymph of the ballet.

Dupontel, who had taken the trouble to be born, but not like the grand seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made fun of once upon a time, was ballasted with a respectable number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir of a house that had sold household utensils and appliances for over a century.