Les Miserables

Babet was transparent, but impenetrable. You could see the light through his bones, but nothing through his eye. He was an affected man, a great talker, who italicized his smiles, and quoted his gestures. What had become of his wife and children, he did not know. He had lost them as one loses a pocket handkerchief.

Marius, Book 7 chapter 3 of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.