So the Faubourg of L’Houmeau grew into a busy and prosperous city, a second Angouleme rivaling the upper town, the residence of the powers that be, the lords spiritual and temporal of Angouleme; though L’Houmeau, with all its business and increasing greatness, was still a mere appendage of the city above.  The noblesse and officialdom dwelt on the crag, trade and wealth remained below.  No love was lost between these two sections of the community all the world over, and in Angouleme it would have been hard to say which of the two camps detested the other the more cordially.  Under the Empire the machinery worked fairly smoothly, but the Restoration wrought both sides to the highest pitch of exasperation.

Nearly every house in the upper town of Angouleme is inhabited by noble, or at any rate by old burgher, families, who live independently on their incomes—­a sort of autochthonous nation who suffer no aliens to come among them.  Possibly, after two hundred years of unbroken residence, and it may be an intermarriage or two with one of the primordial houses, a family from some neighboring district may be adopted, but in the eyes of the aboriginal race they are still newcomers of yesterday.

Prefects, receivers-general, and various administrations that have come and gone during the last forty years, have tried to tame the ancient families perched aloft like wary ravens on their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable.  Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders.  Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin.  Such sagacity will give a sufficient idea of the old-world manners and customs of this society, suffering from thick-headed Royalism, infected with bigotry rather than zeal, all stagnating together, motionless as their town founded upon a rock.  Yet Angouleme enjoyed a great reputation in the provinces round about for its educational advantages, and neighboring towns sent their daughters to its boarding schools and convents.

It is easy to imagine the influence of the class sentiment which held Angouleme aloof from L’Houmeau.  The merchant classes are rich, the noblesse are usually poor.  Each side takes its revenge in scorn of the other.  The tradespeople in Angouleme espouse the quarrel.  “He is a man of L’Houmeau!” a shopkeeper of the upper town will tell you, speaking of a merchant in the lower suburb, throwing an accent into the speech which no words can describe.  When the Restoration defined the position of the French noblesse, holding out hopes to them which could only be realized by a complete and general topsy-turvydom, the distance between Angouleme and L’Houmeau, already more strongly marked than the distance between