When at Palitzinovna the Salvières certainly kept great state, but when at Salvières they once more entered into the grandeur and splendor that belonged to this ancestral home, and that through the centuries had never yielded one iota to modernism except in what concerned creature comforts. There was an army of servants in attendance, a battalion of _gardes-chasses_ and _gardes-forèstiers_, an almoner, a seneschal, a squad of halberdiers in antique costume. The stables contained no less than two hundred horses at all times, and the private harbor, in a small bay at the foot of the huge promontory, floated a steam-yacht, several yawls, and a regular fleet of other craft flying the ducal pennant. The village of Salvières, strange to state, has never once showed signs of accepting as a fact the republican form of government under which France labors. More stubborn than Bretons even--and that is saying the uttermost one can--the canny Normans, who according to the most ancient history can never be tricked into expressing an opinion, nodded their cotton-capped heads when addressed on that subject. “It might well be.” “Perchance it was so.” “Who could tell?” “Ah! was that it?” So far they would concede; but, as they guilelessly added, they of Salvières knew none but their Duke (Jean might have been Sovereign Duke of Normandy, to hear them), “their own Duke,” whose father and grandfather and great-great-great-great-grandfather had also been their suzerain back to times immemorial; so what did it matter whether in that blackguard Paris (_cette gueuse de Paris_) there sat in non-majesty a frock-coated man wearing--on state occasions--a broad scarlet cordon across his shirt-front and, mayhap, a pair of white spats on his plebeian feet? “They of Salvières” had naught to do with him, which, as they gave one to understand, was a mercy of the good God. The thriftiness of the Normans is as proverbial as their obstinacy and craft. Had the Republic’s President prevented them from selling their fish, their eggs, their butter or apples to the best advantage, he might have been worth considering, but the Duc de Salvières was their liege-lord, a splendidly generous one at that, and so they were satisfied that all was well now and hereafter, which praiseworthy feelings were entirely pleasing to themselves and to him also.