ight." Then,
sitting down, she added, "Gentlemen, the milk is getting cold."

Stupefied at being so ill-naturedly received by his landlady, from
whom he half expected an apology, and yet alarmed, like all timid
people at the prospect of a discussion, especially if it relates to
themselves, the poor vicar took his seat in silence. Then, observing
in Mademoiselle Gamard's face the visible signs of ill-humour, he was
goaded into a struggle between his reason, which told him that he
ought not to submit to such discourtesy from a landlady, and his
natural character, which prompted him to avoid a quarrel.

Torn by this inward misery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively
the broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom
immemorial, Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time,
without regard to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on
its surface. The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated
arm-chairs on either side of the square table, the head of which was
taken by the landlady, who seemed to dominate the whole from a high
chair raised on casters, filled with cushions, and standing very near
to the dining-room stove. This room and the salon were on the
ground-floor beneath the salon and bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.

When the vicar had received his cup of coffee, duly sugared, from
Mademoiselle Gamard, he felt chilled to the bone at the grim silence
in which he was forced to proceed with the usually gay function of
breakfast. He dared not look at Troubert's dried-up features, nor at
the threatening visage of the old maid; and he therefore turned, to
keep himself in countenance, to the plethoric pug which was lying on a
cushion near the stove,--a position that victim of obesity seldom
quitted, having a little plate of dainties always at his left side,
and a bowl of fresh water at his right.

"Well, my pretty," said the vicar, "are you waiting for your coffee?"

The personage thus addressed, one of the most important in the
household, though the least troublesome inasmuch as he had ceased to
bark and left the talking to his mistress, turned his little eyes,
sunk in rolls of fat, upon Birotteau. Then he closed them peevishly.
To explain the misery of the poor vicar it should be said that being
endowed by nature with an empty and sonorous loquacity, like the
resounding of a football, he was in the habit of asserting, without
any medical reason to back him, that speech favore