re's coachman.

If you happen to see in the Champs-Elysees one of those charming little
low carriages called 'escargots,' lined with gray silk and trimmed with
blue, and containing a pretty young woman whom you admire because
her face is wreathed in innumerable fair curls, her eyes luminous as
forget-me-nots and filled with love; if you see her bending slightly
towards a fine young man, and, if you are, for a moment, conscious of
envy--pause and reflect that this handsome couple, beloved of God, have
paid their quota to the sorrows of life in times now past. These married
lovers are the Vicomte de Portenduere and his wife. There is not another
such home in Paris as theirs.

"It is the sweetest happiness I have ever seen," said the Comtesse de
l'Estorade, speaking of them lately.

Bless them, therefore, and be not envious; seek an Ursula for
yourselves, a young girl brought up by three old men, and by the best of
all mothers--adversity.

Goupil, who does service to everybody and is justly considered the
wittiest man in Nemours, has won the esteem of the little town, but he
is punished in his children, who are rickety and hydrocephalous. Dionis,
his predecessor, flourishes in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he is
one of the finest ornaments, to the great satisfaction of the king
of the French, who sees Madame Dionis at all his balls. Madame Dionis
relates to the whole town of Nemours the particulars of her receptions
at the Tuileries and the splendor of the court of the king of the
French. She lords it over Nemours by means of the throne, which
therefore must be popular in the little town.

Bongrand is chief-justice of the court of appeals at Melun. His son is
in the way of becoming an honest attorney-general.

Madame Cremiere continues to make her delightful speeches. On the
occasion of her daughter's marriage, she exhorted her to be the working
caterpillar of the household, and to look into everything with the eyes
of a sphinx. Goupil is making a collection of her "slapsus-linquies,"
which he calls a Cremiereana.

"We have had the great sorrow of losing our good Abbe Chaperon," said
the Vicomtesse de Portenduere this winter--having nursed him herself
during his illness. "The whole canton came to his funeral. Nemours is
very fortunate, however, for the successor of that dear saint is the
venerable cure of Saint-Lange."

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.