cider prospects than in the Monarchy.

Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the cards are
making, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted the
usual stock of /dots/, and have married everybody off according to the
genealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty
dames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises.
They huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress; and
twice a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet from Paris,
brought as opportunity offers. Exemplary wives are they for the most
part, and garrulous.

These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a few
outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved the
problem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They
might be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces and
their dresses are literally part of the fixtures of the town, and the
province in which they dwell. They are its tradition, its memory, its
quintessence, the /genius loci/ incarnate. There is something frigid
and monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when to laugh and
when to shake their heads, and every now and then give out some
utterance which passes current as a witticism.

A few rich townspeople have crept into the miniature Faubourg
Saint-Germain, thanks to their money or their aristocratic leanings.
But despite their forty years, the circle still say of them, "Young
So-and-so has sound opinions," and of such do they make deputies. As
a rule, the elderly spinsters are their patronesses, not without
comment.