'
Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to reply
to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest. And
so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the
offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would
exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark
addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must
also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this
smile a definite expression on his features, and you would see there a
perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which you might decipher the
question that he never dared to ask: "Do you really mean that?" He was no
more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the
street, or indeed in life generally, than he was in a drawing-room; and he
might be seen greeting passers-by, carriages, and anything that occurred
with a malicious smile which absolved his subsequent behaviour of all
impropriety, since it proved, if it should turn out unsuited to the
occasion, that he was well aware of that, and that if he had assumed a
smile, the jest was a secret of his own.
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