The idle lounger was hanging about, as usual, on the boulevard du Temple, gazing at the show, when the explosion came.

The poor widow was put upon the pension list, made expressly for the families of the victim, at fifteen hundred francs a year.
The coach, to which were harnessed four iron-gray horses that would have done honor to the Messageries-royales, was divided into three compartments, coupe, interieur, and rotonde, with an imperiale above.

It resembled those diligences called "Gondoles," which now ply, in rivalry with the railroad, between Paris and Versailles.

Both solid and light, well-painted and well-kept, lined with fine blue cloth, and furnished with blinds of a Moorish pattern and cushions of red morocco, the "Swallow of the Oise" could carry, comfortably, nineteen passengers.
Pierrotin, now about fifty-six years old, was little changed.

Still dressed in a blue blouse, beneath which he wore a black suit, he smoked his pipe, and superintended the two porters in livery, who were stowing away the luggage in the great imperiale.
"Are your places taken ?" he said to Madame Clapart and Oscar, eyeing them like a man who is trying to recall a likeness to his memory.
"Yes, two places for the interieur in the name of my servant, Bellejambe," replied Oscar; "he must have taken them last evening." "Ah! monsieur is the new collector of Beaumont," said Pierrotin.