The rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot haste to the House of Claes.
Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile camps.

The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the latter naturally inimical to the former.

This sudden separation took place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting, were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was accepted in the provinces.

Between these social camps, the one ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance, to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall of the legitimate power, were neutral.

At the beginning of the struggle between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes" displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand such practice.