aches worthy of the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face, a
flat nose, and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him.
He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which would be
fatal to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, his beard trimmed,
the smallest details of his dress attended to with English precision.
Hence Amedee de Soulas was looked upon as the finest man in Besancon. A
hairdresser who waited upon him at a fixed hour--another luxury, costing
sixty francs a year--held him up as the sovereign authority in matters
of fashion and elegance.

Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one of
his farms and practise pistol-shooting. He attached as much importance
to this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at three
o'clock he came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and the
ladies who happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of
study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed to
dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of
Besancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven. No life could
be more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for he
punctually attended the services at church on Sundays and holy days.

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, it is
necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besancon. No town
ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besancon the
officials, the _employes_, the military, in short, every one engaged in
governing it, sent thither from Paris to fill a post of any kind, are
all spoken of by the expressive general name of _the Colony_. The colony
is neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the upper rank
and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, fired by a word, a look,
or gesture, are started those feuds between house and house, between a
woman of rank and a citizen's wife, which endure till death, and widen
the impassable gulf which parts the two classes of society. With the
exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the Beauffremont, the de
Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others who come only to stay
on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy of Besancon dates no
further back than a couple of centuries, the time of the conquest by
Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of the _parlement_, and
arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty beyond all