Page 1057 - les-miserables

the Marquis de T*******, who was Minister of Marine and
War. The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a merry little
man, who displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-
up cassock; his specialty was a hatred of the Encyclopaedia,
and his desperate play at billiards, and persons who, at
that epoch, passed through the Rue M***** on summer
evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then stood,
halted to listen to the shock of the balls and the piercing
voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monsei-
gneur Cotiret, Bishop in partibus of Caryste: ‘Mark, Abbe,
I make a cannon.’ The Cardinal de Cl****** T******* had
been brought to Madame de T.’s by his most intimate friend,
M. de Roquelaure, former Bishop of Senlis, and one of the
Forty. M. de Roquelaure was notable for his lofty figure and
his assiduity at the Academy; through the glass door of the
neighboring hall of the library where the French Academy
then held its meetings, the curious could, on every Tuesday,
contemplate the Ex-Bishop of Senlis, usually standing erect,
freshly powdered, in violet hose, with his back turned to the
door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a better view of
his little collar. All these ecclesiastics, though for the most
part as much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity
of the T. salon, whose seigniorial aspect was accentuated by
five peers of France, the Marquis de Vib****, the Marquis de
Tal***, the Marquis de Herb*******, the Vicomte Damb***,
and the Duc de Val********. This Duc de Val********, al-
though Prince de Mon***, that is to say a reigning prince
abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage, that
he viewed everything through their medium. It was he who

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