" [#11 "You count your property you should rather
count the years left to you."] In order not to make a mistake in the
years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows, of the best among whom
all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes--a noisy,
restless "Boheme," greedy after plunder, that crawls about in gallooned
frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque's [#12 Soulonque was
the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of Hayti.] Imperial
dignitaries--, thronged the court crowded the ministries, and pressed
upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One can picture to
himself this upper crust of the "Society of December 10" by considering
that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr.
Veron, the proprietor of the "Constitutional" newspaper, as a type of
the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and
Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was
Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic
opposition, he used to praise him with the term: "C'est le roi des
droles.
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