Eleven persons deserted the Cormon salon, and passed to that of the d'Esgrignons.
The old maid's marriage had a signal effect in defining the two parties in Alencon.

The salon d'Esgrignon represented the upper aristocracy (the returning Troisvilles attached themselves to it); the Cormon salon represented, under the clever influence of du Bousquier, that fatal class of opinions which, without being truly liberal or resolutely royalist, gave birth to the 221 on that famous day when the struggle openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true power, _royalty_, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of all powers,--the power called _parliamentary_, which elective assemblies exercise.

The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the Cormon salon, was boldly liberal.
The Abbe de Sponde, after his return from Prebaudet, bore many and continual sufferings, which he kept within his breast, saying no word of them to his niece.

But to Mademoiselle Armande he opened his heart, admitting that, folly for folly, he would much have preferred the Chevalier de Valois to Monsieur du Bousquier.

Never would the dear chevalier have had the bad taste to contradict and oppose a poor old man who had but a few days more to live; du Bousquier had destroyed everything in the good old home.