Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/27

Rh Some few of them were shod with the wooden sabots that the Breton peasants make for themselves, but most of them wore great iron-bound shoes and coats of very coarse material, shaped after the old French fashion, to which our peasants still cling religiously. Their shirt collars were fastened by silver studs with designs of an anchor or a heart upon them; and, finally, their wallets seemed better stocked than those of their comrades. Some of them even included a flask, filled with brandy no doubt, in their traveler's outfit, hanging it round their necks by a string.

A few townspeople among these semi-barbarous folk looked as if they marked the extreme limits of civilization in those regions. Like the peasants, they exhibited conspicuous differences of costume, some wearing round bonnets, and some flat or peaked caps; some had high boots with the tops turned down, some wore shoes surmounted by gaiters. Ten or so of them had put themselves into the jacket known to the Republicans as a carmagnole; others again, well-to-do artisans doubtless, were dressed from head to foot in materials of uniform color; and the most elegantly arrayed of them all wore swallow-tailed coats or riding-coats of blue or green cloth in more or less threadbare condition. These last, moreover, wore boots of various patterns, as became people of consequence, and flourished large canes, like fellows who face their luck with a stout heart. A head carefully powdered here and there, or decently plaited queues, showed the desire to make the most of ourselves which is inspired in us by a new turn taken in our fortunes or our education.

Any one seeing these men brought together as if by chance, and astonished at finding themselves assembled, might have thought that a conflagration had driven the population of a little town from their homes. But the times and the place made this body of men interesting for very different reasons. A spectator initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which then were rending France would have readily picked out the small number of citizens in that com-