us discourse," said Monsieur de Bourbonne,
after relating the incidents of the internment to Madame de Listomere
when whist was over, the doors shut, and they were alone with the
baron, "this Louis XI. in a cassock--imagine him if you can!--gave a
last flourish to the sprinkler and aspersed the coffin with holy
water." Monsieur de Bourbonne picked up the tongs and imitated the
priest's gesture so satirically that the baron and his aunt could not
help laughing. "Not until then," continued the old gentleman, "did he
contradict himself. Up to that time his behavior had been perfect; but
it was no doubt impossible for him to put the old maid, whom he
despised so heartily and hated almost as much as he hated Chapeloud,
out of sight forever without allowing his joy to appear in that last
gesture."

The next day Mademoiselle Salomon came to breakfast with Madame de
Listomere, chiefly to say, with deep emotion: "Our poor Abbe Birotteau
has just received a frightful blow, which shows the most determined
hatred. He is appointed curate of Saint-Symphorien."

Saint-Symphorien is a suburb of Tours lying beyond the bridge. That
bridge, one of the finest monuments of French architecture, is
nineteen hundred feet long, and the two open squares which surround
each end are precisely alike.

"Don't you see the misery of it?" she said, after a pause, amazed at
the coldness with which Madame de Listomere received the news. "It is
just as if the abbe were a hundred miles from Tours, from his friends,
from everything! It is a frightful exile, and all the more cruel
because he is kept within sight of the town where he can hardly ever
come. Since his troubles he walks very feebly, yet he will have to
walk three miles to see his old friends. He has taken to his bed, just
now, with fever. The parsonage at Saint-Symphorien is very cold and
damp, and the parish is too poor to repair it. The poor old man will
be buried in a living tomb. Oh, it is an infamous plot!"

To end this history it will suffice to relate a few events in a simple
way, and to give one last picture of its chief personages.

Five months later the vicar-general was made Bishop of Troyes; and
Madame de Listomere was dead, leaving an annuity of fifteen hundred
francs to the Abbe Birotteau. The day on which the dispositions in her
will were made known Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, was on
the point of leaving Tours to reside in his diocese, but he delayed
his departur