] The pun itself
flew through the prefect's reception rooms and afterwards through the
town, and for a whole month called up a grin on every face in the
province.

Loiseau was himself a noted wag and famous for his jokes both good and
bad, and nobody ever mentioned him without adding immediately, "That
Loiseau is simply priceless!"

He was of medium height with a balloon-like stomach and a rubicund face
framed in grizzled whiskers. His wife--tall, strong, resolute, loud in
voice and rapid of decision--represented order and arithmetic in the
business, which he enlivened by his jollity and bustling activity.

Beside them, in a more dignified attitude as befitted his superior
station, sat Monsieur Carre-Lamadon, a man of weight; an authority on
cotton, proprietor of three branch businesses, officer of the Legion of
Honor and member of the General Council. All the time of the Empire he
had remained leader of a friendly opposition, for the sole purpose of
making a better thing out of it when he came round to the cause which he
had fought with polite weapons, to use his own expression. Madame
Carre-Lamadon, who was much younger than her husband, was the
consolation of all officers of good family who might be quartered at the
Rouen garrison. She sat there opposite to her husband, very small, very
dainty, very pretty, wrapped in her furs, and regarding the lamentable
interior of the vehicle with despairing eyes.

Their neighbors, the Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, bore one of
the most ancient and noble names in Normandy. The Count, an elderly
gentleman of dignified appearance, did all in his power to accentuate by
every artifice of the toilet his natural resemblance to Henri Quatre,
who, according to a legend of the utmost glory to the family, had
honored with his royal embraces a Dame de Breville, whose husband had,
in consequence, been made Count and Governor of the province.

A colleague of Monsieur Carre-Lamadon in the General Council, Count
Hubert represented the Orleanist faction in the department. The history
of his marriage with the daughter of a small tradesman of Nantes had
always remained a mystery. But as the Countess had an air of grandeur,
understood better than any one else the art of receiving, passed even
for having been beloved by one of the sons of Louis Philippe, the
neighboring nobility bowed down to her, and her salon held the first
place in the county, the only one which preserved the traditi