Certain words which said nothing but answered all things,--progress, steam, bitumen, National guard, order, democratic element, spirit of association, legality, movement, resistance,--seemed, as each political phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard, whose talk was a paraphrase on the ideas of his newspaper.

Julien Minard, the young lawyer, suffered from his father as much as his father suffered from his wife.

Zelie had grown pretentious with wealth, without, at the same time, learning to speak French.

She was now very fat, and gave the idea, in her rich surroundings, of a cook married to her master.
Phellion, that type and model of the petty bourgeois, exhibited as many virtues as he did absurdities.

Accustomed to subordination during his bureaucratic life, he respected all social superiority.