“Did you see among the embassy, that big ambassador who is a hosier?” asked Oudarde.

“Yes,” said Mahiette. “He has the eye of a Saturn.”

“And the big fellow whose face resembles a bare belly?” resumed Gervaise. “And the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?”

“‘Tis their horses that are worth seeing,” said Oudarde, “caparisoned as they are after the fashion of their country!”

“Ah my dear,” interrupted provincial Mahiette, assuming in her turn an air of superiority, “what would you say then, if you had seen in ‘61, at the consecration at Reims, eighteen years ago, the horses of the princes and of the king’s