h
his friends were settling the most cherished matters of his solitary
life, that he remained silent and motionless as if moonstruck,
thinking of nothing, though listening and striving to understand the
meaning of the rapid sentences the assembled company addressed to him.
He took the paper Monsieur Caron had given him and read it, as if he
were giving his mind to the lawyer's document, but the act was merely
mechanical. He signed the paper, by which he declared that he left
Mademoiselle Gamard's house of his own wish and will, and that he had
been fed and lodged while there according to the terms originally
agreed upon. When the vicar had signed the document, Monsieur Caron
took it and asked where his client was to send the things left by the
abbe in her house and belonging to him. Birotteau replied that they
could be sent to Madame de Listomere's,--that lady making him a sign
that she would receive him, never doubting that he would soon be a
canon. Monsieur de Bourbonne asked to see the paper, the deed of
relinquishment, which the abbe had just signed. Monsieur Caron gave it
to him.

"How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that
written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard.
Where are they? and what do they stipulate?"

"The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.

"Do you know the tenor of it?" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to the
lawyer.

"No, monsieur," said Caron, stretching out his hand to regain the
fatal document.

"Ha!" thought the old man; "you know, my good friend, what that deed
contains, but you are not paid to tell us," and he returned the paper
to the lawyer.

"Where can I put my things?" cried Birotteau; "my books, my beautiful
book-shelves, and pictures, my red furniture, and all my treasures?"

The helpless despair of the poor man thus torn up as it were by the
roots was so artless, it showed so plainly the purity of his ways and
his ignorance of the things of life, that Madame de Listomere and
Mademoiselle de Salomon talked to him and consoled him in the tone
which mothers take when they promise a plaything to their children.

"Don't fret about such trifles," they said. "We will find you some
place less cold and dismal than Mademoiselle Gamard's gloomy house. If
we can't find anything you like, one or other of us will take you to
live with us. Come, let's play a game of backgammon. To-morrow you can
go and see the Abbe Troubert and ask him to