Pierre would go: at the appointed hour the horses would arrive, rousing the whole district with their bells; the postillion, who still wore a powdered wig and a blue jacket with red lapels and silver buttons, would fling himself clumsily, heavily-booted, into the saddle, M. Lefèvre would stretch himself nonchalantly in the carriage, wrapped in a big cloak, take a pinch of snuff from a gold box, and say with an air of careless indifference, "Go on!" and at the word the whip cracked, the bells jingled and the carriage disappeared round the corner of the street for three or four days. M. Lefèvre never told us the day or hour of his return: he would return unawares, for he delighted in taking his world by surprise. But M. Lefèvre was not a bad sort of man. Although cold and exacting, he was just; he rarely refused holidays when they were asked for, but, as we shall see, he never pardoned holidays taken without leave. My brother-in-law's mother lived at Crespy, so I had a ready entree into the society of that little town. Alas! alas! what a different world it was from our three-tiered society of Villers-Cotterets of which I have spoken, and above all from our own charming little circle of friends! All the good family of Millet, with whom we had taken shelter during the first invasion, had disappeared: the mother, the two brothers, the two sisters, had all left Crespy and lived in Paris. I have since come across the mother and the eldest sister: they were both in want. I was dreadfully bored in the heart of that ancient capital of Valois! so sick of it that I very often returned home to sleep at my mother's at Villers-Cotterets, when Saturday evening came, taking my gun for a shoot on the way; then I would shoulder my gun at six on Monday morning, and, shooting all the time, I returned to Maître Lefèvre's before the office opened. Thus things went on for three months. I had a pretty room looking into a garden full of flowers; the evening sun shone into the room; I had paper, ink and pens in abundance on my table; the food was good, I looked well enough, and yet I felt I could not possibly continue to live thus.