nor even officiously, since tongues were not free; but a few
exalted personages had been informed, more or less exactly,
of the events which had taken place beyond the frontier.
At any rate, that which was only slightly known, that which was not
matter of conversation even between members of the corps diplomatique,
two guests, distinguished by no uniform, no decoration,
at this reception in the New Palace, discussed in a low voice,
and with apparently very correct information.

By what means, by the exercise of what acuteness had these two ordinary
mortals ascertained that which so many persons of the highest rank
and importance scarcely even suspected? It is impossible to say.
Had they the gifts of foreknowledge and foresight? Did they
possess a supplementary sense, which enabled them to see beyond
that limited horizon which bounds all human gaze? Had they obtained
a peculiar power of divining the most secret events? Was it owing
to the habit, now become a second nature, of living on information,
that their mental constitution had thus become really transformed?
It was difficult to escape from this conclusion.

Of these two men, the one was English, the other French; both were tall
and thin, but the latter was sallow as are the southern Provencals,
while the former was ruddy like a Lancashire gentleman.
The Anglo-Norman, formal, cold, grave, parsimonious of gestures
and words, appeared only to speak or gesticulate under
the influence of a spring operating at regular intervals.
The Gaul, on the contrary, lively and petulant, expressed himself
with lips, eyes, hands, all at once, having twenty different
ways of explaining his thoughts, whereas his interlocutor seemed
to have only one, immutably stereotyped on his brain.