es to pieces, and live generally like two
duelists on the watch for a chance to thrust six inches of steel between
an antagonist's ribs. Each must do his best to get under his enemy's
guard, and a political hatred becomes as all-absorbing as a duel to the
death. Epigram and slander are used against individuals to bring the
party into discredit.

In such warfare as this, waged ceremoniously and without rancor on the
side of the Antiquities, while du Croisier's faction went so far as to
use the poisoned weapons of savages--in this warfare the advantages
of wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should
never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by
gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned
his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer
of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du
Croisier's salon; he stirred up the fires of war, not knowing how far
the spirit of revenge was to urge the rival faction. None but purists
and loyal gentlemen and women sure one of another entered the Hotel
d'Esgrignon; they committed no indiscretions of any kind; they had
their ideas, true or false, good or bad, noble or trivial, but there
was nothing to laugh at in all this. If the Liberals meant to make the
nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the political actions
of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of officials
and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed
of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was
abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of
inferiority, which increased their thirst for revenge.

In 1822, du Croisier put himself at the head of the manufacturing
interest of the province, as the Marquis d'Esgrignon headed the
noblesse. Each represented his party. But du Croisier, instead of giving
himself out frankly for a man of the extreme Left, ostensibly adopted
the opinions formulated at a later date by the 221 deputies.

By taking up this position, he could keep in touch with the magistrates
and local officials and the capitalists of the department. Du Croisier's
salon, a power at least equal to the salon d'Esgrignon, larger
numerically, as well as younger and more energetic, made itself felt all
over the countryside; the Collection of Antiquities, on the other hand,
remained inert, a passive appendage,