1056 Les Miserables
M. Thibord du Chalard, M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and
the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet-Dincourt. The
bailiff de Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs,
sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de Tall-
eyrand. He had been M. le Comte d’Artois’ companion in
pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching under Campaspe,
he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that way
he had exhibited to the ages a philosopher avenged by a bai-
liff. As for the priests, there was the Abbe Halma, the same
to whom M. Larose, his collaborator on la Foudre, said:
‘Bah! Who is there who is not fifty years old? a few green-
horns perhaps?’ The Abbe Letourneur, preacher to the King,
the Abbe Frayssinous, who was not, as yet, either count, or
bishop, or minister, or peer, and who wore an old cassock
whose buttons were missing, and the Abbe Keravenant,
Cure of Saint-Germain-des-Pres; also the Pope’s Nuncio,
then Monsignor Macchi, Archbishop of Nisibi, later on Car-
dinal, remarkable for his long, pensive nose, and another
Monsignor, entitled thus: Abbate Palmieri, domestic prel-
ate, one of the seven participant prothonotaries of the Holy
See, Canon of the illustrious Liberian basilica, Advocate of
the saints, Postulatore dei Santi, which refers to matters of
canonization, and signifies very nearly: Master of Requests
of the section of Paradise. Lastly, two cardinals, M. de la Lu-
zerne, and M. de Cl****** T*******. The Cardinal of Luzerne
was a writer and was destined to have, a few years later, the
honor of signing in the Conservateur articles side by side
with Chateaubriand; M. de Cl****** T******* was Archbish-
op of Toul****, and often made trips to Paris, to his nephew,