About noon they all came down, shouting and calling "John!" "Claude!" "Germain!" with great impatience, and ordering them about like important personages, and seating themselves around the great tables, with their old servants all patched up and standing behind them with their napkins under their arms. These people with their old-fashioned clothes, and their fine manners and happy air, made a very good appearance, and we said to ourselves: "There are the Frenchmen returning from exile; they did wrong to go, and to excite all Europe against us, but there is mercy for every sin; may they be well and happy! That is the worst we wish them." Some of these _emigres_ returned by post, and then our new mayor, Mr. Jourdan, chevalier de St. Louis, the vicar, Mr. Loth, and the new commandant, Mr. Robert de la Faisanderie, in his embroidered uniform, would wait for them at the gate, and when they heard the postilion's whip crack they would go forward, smiling as if some great good fortune had arrived, and the moment the coach stopped, the commandant would run and open it, shouting most enthusiastically. At other times they would stand quite still to show their respect; I have seen these people salute each other three times in succession, slowly and gravely, each time approaching a little nearer to each other. Father Goulden would laugh and say: "Do you see, Joseph, that is the grand style--the style of the nobles of the _ancien regime_; by just looking out of the window we can learn fine manners which may serve us when we get to be dukes and princes." Again it would be: "Those old fellows, there, Joseph, fired away at us from the lines at Wissembourg, they were good riders and they fought well, as all Frenchmen do, but we routed them after all." Then he would wink and go back laughing to his work. But the rumor spread among the servants of the "Red Ox," that these people did not hesitate to say that they had conquered _us_, and that they were our masters; that King Louis XVIII. had always reigned since Louis XVII., son of Louis XVI.; that we were rebels, and that they had come to restore us to order.