evening to the Rogrons. The assiduity of the
one pair induced the assiduity of the other. The colonel and lawyer felt
that they were pitted against adversaries who were fully as strong as
they,--a presentiment that was shared by the priest and his sister. The
situation soon became that of a battle-field. Precisely as the colonel
was enabling Sylvie to taste the unhoped-for joys of being sought in
marriage, so Mademoiselle Habert was enveloping the timid Rogron in the
cotton-wool of her attentions, words, and glances. Neither side could
utter that grand word of statesmanship, "Let us divide!" for each wanted
the whole prey.

The two clever foxes of the Opposition made the mistake of pulling the
first trigger. Vinet, under the spur of self-interest, bethought himself
of his wife's only friends, and looked up Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf
and her mother. The two women were living in poverty at Troyes on two
thousand francs a year. Mademoiselle Bathilde de Chargeboeuf was one
of those fine creatures who believe in marriage for love up to their
twenty-fifth year, and change their opinion when they find themselves
still unmarried. Vinet managed to persuade Madame de Chargeboeuf to join
her means to his and live with his family in Provins, where Bathilde,
he assured her, could marry a fool named Rogron, and, clever as she was,
take her place in the best society of the place.

The arrival of Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf in the lawyer's
household was a great reinforcement for the liberal party; and it
created consternation among the aristocrats of Provins and also in the
Tiphaine clique. Madame de Breautey, horrified to see two women of
rank so misled, begged them to come to her. She was shocked that the
royalists of Troyes had so neglected the mother and daughter, whose
situation she now learned for the first time.

"How is it that no old country gentleman has married that dear girl, who
is cut out for a lady of the manor?" she said. "They have let her run to
seed, and now she is to be flung at the head of a Rogron!"

She ransacked the whole department but did not succeed in finding any
gentleman willing to marry a girl whose mother had only two thousand
francs a year. The "clique" and the subprefect also looked about them
with the same object, but they were all too late. Madame de Breautey
made terrible charges against the selfishness which degraded
France,--the consequence, she said, of materialism, and of the
im