And this secret worry rendered him morose.

In him appeared an incarnation of that old royalist France which sulked and only served the Republic against its heart, that old stern magistracy which closed itself to all evolution, to all new views of things and beings.

Of petty "gown" nobility, originally a Legitimist but now supporting Orleanism, he believed himself to be the one man of wisdom and logic in that _salon_, where he was very proud to meet the Marquis.
They talked of the last events; but with them political conversation was soon exhausted, amounting as it did to a mere bitter condemnation of men and occurrences, for all three were of one mind as to the abominations of the Republican _regime_.

They themselves, however, were only ruins, the remnants of the old parties now all but utterly powerless.

The Marquis for his part soared on high, yielding in nothing, ever faithful to the dead past; he was one of the last representatives of that lofty obstinate _noblesse_ which dies when it finds itself without an effort to escape its fate.