The
marriage of a daughter of the Troisvilles with General Montcornet, so
far from opening the eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought
about a rupture between the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the
latter declaring that the Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with
all sorts of people.
There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did not share
their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was Chesnel the
notary. Although his devotion, sufficiently proved already, was simply
unbounded for the great house now reduced to three persons; although
he accepted all their ideas, and thought them nothing less than right,
he had too much common sense, he was too good a man of business to
more than half the families in the department, to miss the
significance of the great changes that were taking place in people's
minds, or to be blind to the different conditions brought about by
industrial development and modern manners. He had watched the
Revolution pass through the violent phase of 1793, when men, women,
and children wore arms, and heads fell on the scaffold, and victories
were won in pitched battles with Europe; and now he saw the same
forces quietly at work in men's minds, in the shape of ideas which
sanctioned the issues.
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