aries--the
sub-prefect, the receiver of taxes, the mortgage commissioner, and
the postmaster, who are all strangers to the locality, where they are
objects of envy rather than of esteem, and who live after their own
fashion--the real inhabitants, those who were born there and have
every intention of ending their days there, feel too much respect for
traditional usages and established boundaries not to pen themselves of
their own accord in one or other of the town's social divisions.

The nobility virtually cloister themselves. Since the fall of Charles X.
they scarcely ever go out, and when they do they are eager to return
to their large dismal mansions, and walk along furtively as though they
were in a hostile country. They do not visit anyone, nor do they even
receive each other. Their drawing-rooms are frequented by a few priests
only. They spend the summer in the chateaux which they possess in the
environs; in the winter, they sit round their firesides. They are, as
it were, dead people weary of life. And thus the gloomy silence of a
cemetery hangs over their quarter of the town. The doors and windows
are carefully barricaded; one would think their mansions were so many
convents shut off from all the tumult of the world. At rare intervals
an abbe, whose measured tread adds to the gloomy silence of these sealed
houses, passes by and glides like a shadow through some half-opened
doorway.

The well-to-do people, the retired tradesmen, the lawyers and notaries,
all those of the little easy-going, ambitious world that inhabits the
new town, endeavour to infuse some liveliness into Plassans. They go
to the parties given by the sub-prefect, and dream of giving similar
entertainments. They eagerly seek popularity, call a workman "my good
fellow," chat with the peasants about the harvest, read the papers, and
walk out with their wives on Sundays. Theirs are the enlightened
minds of the district, they are the only persons who venture to speak
disparagingly of the ramparts; in fact, they have several times demanded
of the authorities the demolition of those old walls, relics of a former
age. At the same time, the most sceptical among them experience a shock
of delight whenever a marquis or a count deigns to honour them with a
stiff salutation. Indeed, the dream of every citizen of the new town is
to be admitted to a drawing-room of the Saint-Marc quarter. They know
very well that their ambition is not attainable, and it is th