A majority of them felt a contempt for the bourgeois, the "civilian," fully equal to the contempt of nobles for their serfs, or conquerors for the conquered.

Such men did not always observe the laws of honor in their dealings with civilians; nor did they much blame those who rode rough-shod over the bourgeoisie.

The others, and particularly the artillery, perhaps because of its republicanism, never adopted the doctrine of a military France and a civil France, the tendency of which was nothing less than to make two nations.

So, although Major Potel and Captain Renard, two officers living in the Rome suburb, were friends to Maxence Gilet "through thick and thin," Major Mignonnet and Captain Carpentier took sides with the bourgeoisie, and thought his conduct unworthy of a man of honor.
Major Mignonnet, a lean little man, full of dignity, busied himself with the problems which the steam-engine requires us to solve, and lived in a modest way, taking his social intercourse with Monsieur and Madame Carpentier.

His gentle manners and ways, and his scientific occupations won him the respect of the whole town; and it was frequently said of him and of Captain Carpentier that they were "quite another thing" from Major Potel and Captain Renard, Maxence, and other frequenters of the cafe Militaire, who retained the soldierly manners and the defective morals of the Empire.
At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun, Max was excluded from the society of the place.