d were, in fact, a species of police,
armed with the unerring gift of spying bestowed by passions. When they
had divined the secret meaning of some event their vanity led them to
appropriate to themselves the wisdom of their sanhedrim, and set the
tone to the gossip of their respective spheres. This idle but ever
busy fraternity, invisible, yet seeing all things, dumb, but
perpetually talking, possessed an influence which its nonentity seemed
to render harmless, though it was in fact terrible in its effects when
it concerned itself with serious interests. For a long time nothing
had entered the sphere of these existences so serious and so momentous
to each one of them as the struggle of Birotteau, supported by Madame
de Listomere, against Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert. The
three salons of Madame de Listomere and the Demoiselles Merlin de la
Blottiere and de Villenoix being considered as enemies by all the
salons which Mademoiselle Gamard frequented, there was at the bottom
of the quarrel a class sentiment with all its jealousies. It was the
old Roman struggle of people and senate in a molehill, a tempest in a
teacup, as Montesquieu remarked when speaking of the Republic of San
Marino, whose public offices are filled by the day only,--despotic
power being easily seized by any citizen.

But this tempest, petty as it seems, did develop in the souls of these
persons as many passions as would have been called forth by the
highest social interests. It is a mistake to think that none but souls
concerned in mighty projects, which stir their lives and set them
foaming, find time too fleeting. The hours of the Abbe Troubert fled
by as eagerly, laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs
and hopes as deep as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or
the statesman. God alone is in the secret of the energy we expend upon
our occult triumphs over man, over things, over ourselves. Though we
know not always whither we are going we know well what the journey
costs us. If it be permissible for the historian to turn aside for a
moment from the drama he is narrating and ask his readers to cast a
glance upon the lives of these old maids and abbes, and seek the cause
of the evil which vitiates them at their source, we may find it
demonstrated that man must experience certain passions before he can
develop within him those virtues which give grandeur to life by
widening his sphere and checking the selfishness whic