A carriage is making its way towards the church; it has a green body and silver lamps. The old coachman, whose great glove sways the slender scepter of a whip, is so adorned with overlapping capes that he suggests several men on the top of each other. The black horse is prancing.
"He shines like a piano," says Benoît.
The Baroness is in the carriage. The blinds are drawn, so she cannot be seen, but every one salutes the carriage.
"All slaves!" mumbles Brisbille. "Look at yourselves now, just look! All the lot of you, as soon as a rich old woman goes by, there you are, poking your noses into the ground, showing your bald heads, and growing humpbacked."
"She does good," protests one of the gathering.
"Good? Ah, yes, indeed!" gurgles the evil man, writhing as though in the grip of some one; "I call it ostentation—that's what I call it."
Shoulders are shrugged, and Monsieur Joseph Bonéas, always self-controlled, smiles.
Encouraged by that smile, I say, "There have always been rich people, and there must be."
"Of course," trumpets Crillon, "that's one of the established thoughts that you find in your head when you fish for 'em. But mark what I says,—there's some that dies of envy. I'm not one of them that dies of envy."
Monsieur Mielvaque has put his hat back on his petrified head and gone to the door. Monsieur Joseph Bonéas, also, turns his back and goes away.