d, in truth,
no other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the
Princess could; while there was a precision and a grace about the
movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which
drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice
had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she could
not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a
peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand
livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her
woods to her; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she
was a woman of no little consequence.

This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was
a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been
a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly
compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a
little, and he held his head high; to many people this would have given
an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as
a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether,
his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and
slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or
rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.

The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Duc de
Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale;
both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned
men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But
for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease
of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial
observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake
would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared,
vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors
whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to
humiliate with an unexpected phrase.

Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to
perish rather than submit to any change. It was a nobl