If shots are rare in the streets, intrigues consume the drawing-rooms of both the new town and the Saint-Marc quarter.

Until the year 1830 the masses were reckoned of no account.

Even at the present time they are similarly ignored.

Everything is settled between the clergy, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie.

The priests, who are very numerous, give the cue to the local politics; they lay subterranean mines, as it were, and deal blows in the dark, following a prudent tactical system, which hardly allows of a step in advance or retreat even in the course of ten years.