ging and
quarrelsome, she annoyed her partners as much as her adversaries, and
became the scourge of society. And yet, possessed by a silly,
unconcealed ambition, Rogron and his sister were bent on playing a
part in the society of a little town already in possession of a close
corporation of twelve allied families. Allowing that the restoration
of their house had cost them thirty thousand francs, the brother and
sister possessed between them at least ten thousand francs a year.
This they considered wealth, and with it they endeavored to impress
society, which immediately took the measure of their vulgarity, crass
ignorance, and foolish envy. On the evening when they were presented
to the beautiful Madame Tiphaine, who had already eyed them at Madame
Garceland's and at Madame Julliard the elder's, the queen of the town
remarked to Julliard junior, who stayed a few moments after the rest
of the company to talk with her and her husband:--

"You all seem to be taken with those Rogrons."

"No, no," said Amadis, "they bore my mother and annoy my wife. When
Mademoiselle Sylvie was apprenticed, thirty years ago, to my father,
none of them could endure her."

"I have a great mind," said Madame Tiphaine, putting her pretty foot
on the bar of the fender, "to make it understood that my salon is not
an inn."

Julliard raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if to say, "Good heavens?
what wit, what intellect!"

"I wish my society to be select; and it certainly will not be if I
admit those Rogrons."

"They have neither heart, nor mind, nor manners"; said Monsieur
Tiphaine. "If, after selling thread for twenty years, as my sister did
for example--"

"Your sister, my dear," said his wife in a parenthesis, "cannot be out
of place in any salon."

"--if," he continued, "people are stupid enough not to throw off the
shop and polish their manners, if they don't know any better than to
mistake the Counts of Champagne for the _accounts_ of a wine-shop, as
Rogron did this evening, they had better, in my opinion, stay at
home."

"They are simply impudent," said Julliard. "To hear them talk you
would suppose there was no other handsome house in Provins but theirs.
They want to crush us; and after all, they have hardly enough to live
on."

"If it was only the brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up
with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he
will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole