in the division Billardiere," he said, "like Napoleon
before the 18th Brumaire, and I behold you now the Napoleon of the
Empire."

Notwithstanding which flattery, Minard received Dutocq very coldly and
did not invite him to his house; consequently, he made a mortal enemy of
the former clerk.

Monsieur and Madame Phellion, worthy as they were, could not keep
themselves from making calculations and cherishing hopes; they thought
that Celeste would be the very wife for their son the professor;
therefore, to have, as it were, a watcher in the Thuillier salon, they
introduced their son-in-law, Monsieur Barniol, a man much respected
in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and also an old employee at the mayor's
office, an intimate friend of theirs, named Laudigeois. Thus the
Phellions formed a phalanx of seven persons; the Collevilles were not
less numerous; so that on Sundays it often appeared that thirty persons
were assembled in the Thuillier salon. Thuillier renewed acquaintance
with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and Falleixs,--all persons of
respectability in the quarter of the Palais-Royal, whom they often
invited to dinner.

Madame Colleville was, as a woman, the most distinguished member of
this society, just as Minard junior and Professor Phellion were superior
among the men. All the others, without ideas or education, and issuing
from the lower ranks, presented the types and the absurdities of the
lesser bourgeoisie. Though all success, especially if won from distant
sources, seems to presuppose some genuine merit, Minard was really
an inflated balloon. Expressing himself in empty phrases, mistaking
sycophancy for politeness, and wordiness for wit, he uttered his
commonplaces with a brisk assurance that passed for eloquence. Certain
words which said nothing but answered all things,--progress, steam,
bitumen, National guard, order, democratic element, spirit of
association, legality, movement, resistance,--seemed, as each political
phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard, whose talk was
a paraphrase on the ideas of his newspaper. Julien Minard, the young
lawyer, suffered from his father as much as his father suffered from
his wife. Zelie had grown pretentious with wealth, without, at the same
time, learning to speak French. She was now very fat, and gave the idea,
in her rich surroundings, of a cook married to her master.

Phellion, that type and model of the petty bourgeois, exhibited as many
virtues as he d