remained the most exclusive in the locality, the only one where
old gallantry was conserved and admission to which was not easy.

The wealth of the de Brevilles, all invested in real estate, was
estimated to yield an annual income of five hundred thousand francs.

These six persons occupied the rear of the coach, the side of
wealthy, serene and solid Society, authoritative, honest people
who have religion and principles.

By a strange hazard, all the women were seated on the same side;
and the Countess further had for neighbors two saintly nuns who
fingered long rosaries and mumbled Paters and Aves. One of them
was old and had a face so deeply pitted with smallpox, that she
looked as if she had been shot full in the face by a rapid-firing
gun. The other, very frail, had a pretty and sickly head on
a narrow consumptive chest eaten up by that devouring faith which
makes martyrs and visionaries. Seated opposite the nuns, a man
and a woman attracted the eyes of all the other passengers.

The man, a well known character, was Cornudet the democrat,
the terror of respectable people. Since twenty years he had been
dipping his large red beard in the bocks of all the democratic
Cafes. He had spent, with the help of his brethren and friends, a
good sized fortune inherited from his father, a retired Confectioner,
and he was impatiently waiting for the advent of the Republic
to secure a political position deserved by so many revolutionary
libations. On the fourth of September, possibly as a result of a
practical joke, he had thought that he had been appointed Prefect, but
when he wanted to take up his duties, the clerk, who had remained