gant little suppers
were then given, and some masked balls during the Carnival. As to
literature--there were the newspapers. Politics and business were
discussed. Monsieur de la Baudraye was constantly there--on his wife's
account, as she said jestingly.

This result deeply grieved the Superior Woman, who despaired of
Sancerre, and collected the wit of the neighborhood in her own
drawing-room. Nevertheless, and in spite of the efforts of Messieurs de
Chargeboeuf, Gravier, and de Clagny, of the Abbe Duret and the two chief
magistrates, of a young doctor, and a young Assistant Judge--all blind
admirers of Dinah's--there were occasions when, weary of discussion,
they allowed themselves an excursion into the domain of agreeable
frivolity which constitutes the common basis of worldly conversation.
Monsieur Gravier called this "from grave to gay." The Abbe Duret's
rubber made another pleasing variety on the monologues of the oracle.
The three rivals, tired of keeping their minds up to the level of the
"high range of discussion"--as they called their conversation--but not
daring to confess it, would sometimes turn with ingratiating hints to
the old priest.

"Monsieur le Cure is dying for his game," they would say.

The wily priest lent himself very readily to the little trick. He
protested.

"We should lose too much by ceasing to listen to our inspired hostess!"
and so he would incite Dinah's magnanimity to take pity at last on her
dear Abbe.

This bold manoeuvre, a device of the Sous-prefet's, was repeated with
so much skill that Dinah never suspected her slaves of escaping to the
prison yard, so to speak, of the cardtable; and they would leave her one
of the younger functionaries to harry.

One young landowner, and the dandy of Sancerre, fell away from Dinah's
good graces in consequence of some rash demonstrations. After soliciting
the honor of admission to this little circle, where he flattered himself
he could snatch the blossom from the constituted authorities who guarded
it, he was so unfortunate as to yawn in the middle of an explanation
Dinah was favoring him with--for the fourth time, it is true--of the
philosophy of Kant. Monsieur de la Thaumassiere, the grandson of the
historian of Le Berry, was thenceforth regarded as a man entirely bereft
of soul and brains.

The three devotees _en titre_ each submitted to these exorbitant demands
on their mind and attention, in hope of a crowning triumph, when at last
D