ought to combine, as it were, in their dignity as wives in face
of this shameless hussy; for legitimized love always despises its
easygoing brother.

The three men, also, brought together by a certain conservative instinct
awakened by the presence of Cornudet, spoke of money matters in a tone
expressive of contempt for the poor. Count Hubert related the losses he
had sustained at the hands of the Prussians, spoke of the cattle which
had been stolen from him, the crops which had been ruined, with the easy
manner of a nobleman who was also a tenfold millionaire, and whom such
reverses would scarcely inconvenience for a single year. Monsieur
Carre-Lamadon, a man of wide experience in the cotton industry, had taken
care to send six hundred thousand francs to England as provision against
the rainy day he was always anticipating. As for Loiseau, he had managed
to sell to the French commissariat department all the wines he had in
stock, so that the state now owed him a considerable sum, which he hoped
to receive at Havre.

And all three eyed one another in friendly, well-disposed fashion.
Although of varying social status, they were united in the brotherhood of
money--in that vast freemasonry made up of those who possess, who
can jingle gold wherever they choose to put their hands into their
breeches' pockets.

The coach went along so slowly that at ten o'clock in the morning it had
not covered twelve miles. Three times the men of the party got out and
climbed the hills on foot. The passengers were becoming uneasy, for they
had counted on lunching at Totes, and it seemed now as if they would
hardly arrive there before nightfall. Every one was eagerly looking out
for an inn by the roadside, when, suddenly, the coach foundered in a
snowdrift, and it took two hours to extricate it.

As appetites increased, their spirits fell; no inn, no wine shop could be
discovered, the approach of the Prussians and the transit of the starving
French troops having frightened away all business.

The men sought food in the farmhouses beside the road, but could not find
so much as a crust of bread; for the suspicious peasant invariably hid
his stores for fear of being pillaged by the soldiers, who, being
entirely without food, would take violent possession of everything they
found.

About one o'clock Loiseau announced that he positively had a big hollow
in his stomach. They had all been suffering in the same way for some
time, and the incre