Despite Monsieur Berlingue's prediction, the guests soon arrived; little wicker carriages and covered chaises brought divers persons of great distinction, for there were no cabs or omnibuses at Saint-Amand, and everybody could not afford a handsome turnout. However, there were a few chars-à-bancs and a few pretty cabriolets to be seen in that crowd of carriages; and the persons who alighted from them cast patronizing glances upon those who arrived in chaises; vanity is present at all festivities, but in the provinces above all it makes us poor weak mortals giddy.
The La Pincerie family arrived in a carriage half-way between a city and a country vehicle: it was a huge cabriolet, not unlike that generally called a _coucou_, the lower part being of wicker, and the top of oilcloth; it might in a crowd have passed for the carriage of a merchant of Poissy; but Monsieur de la Pincerie declared that he would not exchange it for the most modern landau, because it descended to him from his ancestors; and from the leanness of the one horse which drew it, one might have been tempted to believe that the poor beast also had served the marquis's ancestors.
Monsieur de la Pincerie was a man of about sixty, almost six feet tall, and exceedingly thin; he wore a queue and his hair was powdered; his yellow, wrinkled face almost always wore an expression of arrogance and disdain; he rarely passed two minutes without coughing and expectorating, but he did it all with a gravity which caused the people about him to believe that not everybody in the world could spit as he could.
A little man with squinting eyes, red hair, a blue nose, and red ears, was the second person to alight from the carriage; he had not put his foot to the ground before he began to smile and show teeth which would have put those of a horse to shame. This gentleman, with whom they had not as yet succeeded in doing anything, and for whom they were still trying to find a place, although he was nearly fifty-five, was the marquis's brother; he was called Mignon, a pet name which had been given to him when he was a child, and which it seemed to be his destiny to bear all his life. After smiling like a wild boar, while his brother expectorated upon one of the greased poles, Mignon stepped forward and offered his hand to a young lady, who leaped from the carriage, saying to her uncle: