and the countess had, moreover, as neighbors two nuns, who spent the time
in fingering their long rosaries and murmuring paternosters and aves. One
of them was old, and so deeply pitted with smallpox that she looked for
all the world as if she had received a charge of shot full in the face.
The other, of sickly appearance, had a pretty but wasted countenance, and
a narrow, consumptive chest, sapped by that devouring faith which is the
making of martyrs and visionaries.

A man and woman, sitting opposite the two nuns, attracted all eyes.

The man--a well-known character--was Cornudet, the democrat,
the terror of all respectable people. For the past twenty years his big
red beard had been on terms of intimate acquaintance with the tankards of
all the republican cafes. With the help of his comrades and brethren he
had dissipated a respectable fortune left him by his father, an
old-established confectioner, and he now impatiently awaited the
Republic, that he might at last be rewarded with the post he had earned
by his revolutionary orgies. On the fourth of September--possibly as
the result of a practical joke--he was led to believe that he had
been appointed prefect; but when he attempted to take up the duties of
the position the clerks in charge of the office refused to recognize his
authority, and he was compelled in consequence to retire. A good sort of
fellow in other respects, inoffensive and obliging, he had thrown himself
zealously into the work of making an organized defence of the town. He
had had pits dug in the level country, young forest trees felled, and
traps set on all the roads; then at the approach of the enemy, thoroughly
satisfied with his preparations, he had hastily returned to the town. He
thought he might now do more good at Havre, where new intrenchments would
soon be necessary.