The blinds are drawn, so she cannot be seen, but every one salutes the carriage.
"All slaves!" mumbles Brisbille.

"Look at yourselves now, just look! All the lot of you, as soon as a rich old woman goes by, there you are, poking your noses into the ground, showing your bald heads, and growing humpbacked." "She does good," protests one of the gathering.
"Good?
Ah, yes, indeed!" gurgles the evil man, writhing as though in the grip of some one; "I call it ostentation--that's what _I_ call it." Shoulders are shrugged, and Monsieur Joseph Boneas, always self-controlled, smiles.
Encouraged by that smile, I say, "There have always been rich people, and there must be." "Of course," trumpets Crillon, "that's one of the established thoughts that you find in your head when you fish for 'em.

But mark what I says,--there's some that dies of envy.

I'm _not_ one of them that dies of envy." Monsieur Mielvaque has put his hat back on his petrified head and gone to the door.

Monsieur Joseph Boneas, also, turns his back and goes away.
All at once Crillon cries, "There's Petrarque!" and darts outside on the track of a big body, which, having seen him, opens its long pair of compasses and escapes obliquely.
"And to think," says Brisbille, with a horrible grimace, when Crillon has disappeared, "that the scamp is a town councilor! Ah, by God!" He foams, as a wave of anger runs through him, swaying on his feet, and gaping at the ground.