The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 | Page 6

simply priceless!"
He was of medium height with a balloon-like stomach and a rubicund
face framed in grizzled whiskers. His wife--tall, strong, resolute, loud
in voice and rapid of decision--represented order and arithmetic in the
business, which he enlivened by his jollity and bustling activity.
Beside them, in a more dignified attitude as befitted his superior station,
sat Monsieur Carré-Lamadon, a man of weight; an authority on cotton,
proprietor of three branch businesses, officer of the Legion of Honor
and member of the General Council. All the time of the Empire he had
remained leader of a friendly opposition, for the sole purpose of
making a better thing out of it when he came round to the cause which
he had fought with polite weapons, to use his own expression. Madame
Carré-Lamadon, who was much younger than her husband, was the
consolation of all officers of good family who might be quartered at the
Rouen garrison. She sat there opposite to her husband, very small, very

dainty, very pretty, wrapped in her furs, and regarding the lamentable
interior of the vehicle with despairing eyes.
Their neighbors, the Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, bore one
of the most ancient and noble names in Normandy. The Count, an
elderly gentleman of dignified appearance, did all in his power to
accentuate by every artifice of the toilet his natural resemblance to
Henri Quatre, who, according to a legend of the utmost glory to the
family, had honored with his royal embraces a Dame de Breville,
whose husband had, in consequence, been made Count and Governor
of the province.
A colleague of Monsieur Carré-Lamadon in the General Council,
Count Hubert represented the Orleanist faction in the department. The
history of his marriage with the daughter of a small tradesman of
Nantes had always remained a mystery. But as the Countess had an air
of grandeur, understood better than any one else the art of receiving,
passed even for having been beloved by one of the sons of Louis
Philippe, the neighboring nobility bowed down to her, and her salon
held the first place in the county, the only one which preserved the
traditions of the viel le galanterie and to which the entreé was difficult.
The fortune of the Brevilles--all in Government Funds--was reported to
yield them an income of five hundred thousand francs.
The six passengers occupied the upper end of the conveyance, the
representatives of revenued society, serene in the consciousness of its
strength--honest well-to-do people possessed of Religion and
Principles.
By some strange chance all the women were seated on the same side,
the Countess having two sisters of Mercy for neighbors, wholly
occupied in fingering their long rosaries and mumbling Paters and Aves.
One of them was old and so deeply pitted with the small-pox that she
looked as if she had received a charge of grape shot full in the face; the
other was very shadowy and frail, with a pretty unhealthy little face, a
narrow phthisical chest, consumed by that devouring faith which
creates martyrs and ecstatics.

Seated opposite to the two nuns were a man and woman who excited a
good deal of attention.
The man, who was well known, was Cornudet, "the demon," the terror
of all respectable, law-abiding people. For twenty years he had dipped
his great red beard into the beer mugs of all the democratic café's. In
the company of kindred spirits he had managed to run through a
comfortable little fortune inherited from his father, a confectioner, and
he looked forward with impatience to the Republic, when he should
obtain the well-merited reward for so many revolutionary draughts. On
the Fourth of September--probably through some practical joke--he
understood that he had been appointed prefect, but on attempting to
enter upon his duties the clerks, who had remained sole masters of the
offices, refused to recognize him, and he was constrained to retire. For
the rest, he was a good fellow, inoffensive and serviceable, and had
busied himself with incomparable industry in organizing the defense of
the town; had had holes dug all over the plain, cut down all the young
trees in the neighboring woods, scattered pitfalls up and down all the
high roads, and at the threatened approach of the enemy--satisfied with
his preparations--had fallen back with all haste on the town. He now
considered that he would be more useful in Havre, where fresh
entrenchments would soon become necessary.
The woman, one of the so-called "gay" sisterhood, was noted for her
precocious stoutness, which had gained her the nickname of "Boule de
Suif"--"ball of fat." She was a little roly-poly creature, cushioned with
fat, with podgy fingers squeezed in at the joints like rows of thick, short
sausages; her skin tightly stretched and shiny, her bust enormous, and
yet with it