c, are given to the
different coaches; such, for instance, as the "Caillard," the "Ducler"
(the coach between Nemours and Paris), the "Grand Bureau." Every new
enterprise is called the "Competition." In the days of the Lecompte
company their coaches were called the "Countess."--"'Caillard' could not
overtake the 'Countess'; but 'Grand Bureau' caught up with her finely,"
you will hear the men say. If you see a postilion pressing his horses
and refusing a glass of wine, question the conductor and he will
tell you, snuffing the air while his eye gazes far into space, "The
'Competition' is ahead."--"We can't get in sight of her," cries
the postilion; "the vixen! she wouldn't stop to let her passengers
dine."--"The question is, has she got any?" responds the conductor.
"Give it to Polignac!" All lazy and bad horses are called Polignac.
Such are the jokes and the basis of conversation between postilions and
conductors on the roofs of the coaches. Each profession, each calling in
France has its slang.

"Have you seen the 'Ducler'?" asked Minoret.

"Monsieur Desire?" said the postilion, interrupting his master. "Hey!
you must have heard us, didn't our whips tell you? we felt you were
somewhere along the road."

Just then a woman dressed in her Sunday clothes,--for the bells were
pealing from the clock tower and calling the inhabitants to mass,--a
woman about thirty-six years of age came up to the post master.

"Well, cousin," she said, "you wouldn't believe me--Uncle is with Ursula
in the Grand'Rue, and they are going to mass."

In spite of the modern poetic canons as to local color, it is quite
impossible to push realism so far as to repeat the horrible blasphemy
mingled with oaths which this news, apparently so unexciting, brought
from the huge mouth of Minoret-Levrault; his shrill voice grew sibilant,
and his face took on the appearance of what people oddly enough call a
sunstroke.

"Is that true?" he asked, after the first explosion of his wrath was
over.

The postilions bowed to their master as they and their horses passed
him, but he seemed to neither see nor hear them. Instead of waiting for
his son, Minoret-Levrault hurried up to the Grand'Rue with his cousin.

"Didn't I always tell you so?" she resumed. "When Doctor Minoret
goes out of his head that demure little hypocrite will drag him into
religion; whoever lays hold of the mind gets hold of the purse, and
she'll have our inheritance."

"But, Madame Massi