remarked to her friends
and acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,
extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.

As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing
about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a
satellite in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of
intermediary creature between the individuals of the human species and
those of the canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but
directly before, the place intended for friends but now occupied by a
fat and wheezy pug which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert
completely, and the intermingling of their interests was so obvious
that many persons of her social sphere believed that the Abbe Troubert
had designs on the old maid's property, and was binding her to him
unawares with infinite patience, and really directing her while he
seemed to be obeying without ever letting her percieve in him the
slightest wish on his part to govern her.

When the Abbe Chapeloud died, the old maid, who desired a lodger with
quiet ways, naturally thought of the vicar. Before the canon's will
was made known she had meditated offering his rooms to the Abbe
Troubert, who was not very comfortable on the ground-floor. But when
the Abbe Birotteau, on receiving his legacy, came to settle in writing
the terms of his board she saw he was so in love with the apartment,
for which he might now admit his long cherished desires, that she
dared not propose the exchange, and accordingly sacrificed her
sentiments of friendship to the demands of self-interest. But in order
to console her beloved canon, Mademoiselle took up the large white
Chateau-Renaud bricks that made the floors of his apartment and
replaced them by wooden floors laid in "point de Hongrie." She also
rebuilt a smoky chimney.

For twelve years the Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloud in
that house without ever giving a thought to the motive of the canon's
extreme circumspection in his relations to Mademoiselle Gamard. When
he came himself to live with that saintly woman he was in the
condition of a lover on the point of being made happy. Even if he had
not been by nature purblind of intellect, his eyes were too dazzled by
his new happiness to allow him to judge of the landlady, or to reflect
on the limits which he ought to impose on their daily intercourse.
Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar and through the prism of those
material felic