By the time that the landlord had half done his gossip, Oliver had finished his bread and wine; then, the horses being refreshed, he bade the servant whom he had brought down from Paris with him to order out the calash. The landlord would have assisted Oliver in carrying his iron box, but Oliver would not permit it. He commanded him somewhat sharply to let it alone, and he himself stowed it safely within the calash. His man-servant was holding the door open for him to enter, and Oliver already had his foot placed upon the step ready to ascend, when the clatter of hoofs and the rumble of a coach caught his attention, and he waited to see it pass. It was a huge, lumbering affair, as big as a small house, and was dragged thunderously along by six horses. A number of outriders surrounded it as it came sweeping along amid a cloud of dust, in the midst of which the whips of the postilions cracked and snapped like pistol-shots. So Oliver waited, with some curiosity, until the whole affair had thundered by along the road, with its crashing, creaking, rattling clatter, preceded by the running footmen with their long canes, and the outriders in their uniform of white and blue. It was all gone in a moment--a moment that left Oliver standing dumb and rooted. In that instant of passing he had seen three faces through the open windows of the coach: the first, that of a stout, red-faced man, thick-lipped, sensual; second, that of a lady, pale and large-eyed, once beautiful perhaps, now faded and withered. But the third! The third face was looking directly at him, and it was the glimpse of it that left him rooted, bereft of motion. It was the same face that he had seen that first day in the magic mirror in the master's house; the face that he had seen in that mirror, and unknown to the master, not once, not twice, but scores of times--hundreds of times. The landlord's voice brought him to himself with a shock. "Monsieur has dropped his handkerchief." Oliver took the handkerchief mechanically from his hand, and as he entered the coach like one in a dream, he heard the landlord say, as his servant closed the door with a clash. "That was Monseigneur the Marquis on his way to the Château Flourens." SCENE SECOND.--_The Widow Munier's house in Flourens. Not the poor rude hut that Oliver had left her in when he first went to Paris, but the house of the late Doctor Fouchette--the best house in the town. The Widow Munier is discovered sitting at the window, with her face close to the glass, looking down the street expectantly._ Oliver had been gone a year, and that year had wrought great changes with her. All the town knew that a great fortune had come to her, and she was no longer the poor widow Munier, the relict of Jean Munier the tailor; she was Madame Munier.