For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was
accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the one
ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of
functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance,
to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall
of the legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes"
displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so
brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the
lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were
unable to withstand such practice. The two societies naturally became
exclusive.
Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His
self-love must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he
received when he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with
whom he had rubbed shoulders up to the time of this social change.
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