She was sitting opposite her husband, pretty, slender, graceful, curled in her furs, and gazed mournfully at the lamentable interior of the coach.

Her neighbors, Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, bore one of the most ancient and noble names of Normandy. the Count, an old nobleman of aristocratic bearing, endeavored to accentuate by the artifices of his toilette his natural resemblance to King Henry IV, who, according to a legend, in which the family gloried, had caused the maternity of a de Breville lady whose husband, on account of his royal connection, had been made a Count and Governor of a Province.

A Colleague of Carre-Lamadon in the General Council, Count Hubert represented the Orleanist party in his Department.  The story of his marriage with the daughter of a small ship-owner of Nantes had always remained mysterious.  But as the Countess had a grand air, entertained better than any other hostess, and was credited with having been the Dulcinea of one of Louis Philippe’s sons, the whole nobility showed her the greatest consideration, and her salon 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 in charge of the office, refused to recognize him, which compelled him to retire.  A very good natured chap, and moreover inoffensive and serviable, he had worked with an incomparable energy to organize the defense of the City.  He had had trenches dug in the plains, all the young trees in the neighboring forests cut down, traps set on all the roads, and at the approach of the enemy, satisfied with his preparations, he had hurriedly returned to town.  He thought now that he would be more useful in Havre where new trenches were going to be needed.