hurl himself into it, in order to escape
the irritating street, to rid his body of the necessity of walking and
choosing a path--to stop a cab as for a wounded man. But at that hour of
general home-coming the square was crowded with hundreds of victorias,
caleches, coupes, descending from the resplendent glory of the
Arc-de-Triomphe toward the purple freshness of the Tuileries, crowding
closely upon one another down the inclined surface of the avenue to the
great cross-roads where the motionless statues, standing firmly on their
pedestals with their wreath-encircled brows, watched them diverge toward
Faubourg Saint-Germain, Rue Royale and Rue de Rivoli.

Jansoulet, newspaper in hand, made his way through the uproar, without
thinking of it, bending his steps instinctively toward the club, where
he went every day to play cards from six to seven. He was a public man
still; but intensely excited, talking aloud, stammering oaths and
threats in a voice that suddenly became soft once more as he thought of
the dear old woman.--To think of rolling her in the mire too! Oh! if she
should read it, if she could understand! What punishment could he
invent for such an infamous outrage? He reached Rue Royale, where
equipages of all sorts returning from the Bois bowled swiftly homeward,
with whirling axles, visions of veiled women and children's curly heads,
bringing a little vegetable mould to the pavements of Paris and whiffs
of spring mingled with the perfume of rice-powder. In front of the
Ministry of Marine, a phaeton perched very high upon slender wheels,
bearing a strong resemblance to a huge field-spider, the little groom
clinging behind and the two persons on the box-seat forming its body,
came very near colliding with the sidewalk as it turned.

The Nabob raised his head, and restrained an exclamation.

Beside a painted hussy with red hair, wearing a tiny little hat with
broad ribbons, who, from her perch on her leather cushion, was driving
the horse with her hands, her eyes, her whole made-up person, stiffly
erect, yet leaning forward, sat Moessard, Moessard the dandy,
pink-cheeked and painted like his companion, raised on the same
dung-heap, fattened on the same vices. The strumpet and the journalist,
and she was not the one of the two who sold herself most shamelessly!
Towering above the women lolling in their caleches, the men who sat
opposite them buried under flounces, all the attitudes of fatigue and
ennui which they