after examining herself into all the
suspicious circumstances. She kept Pierrette close to her, so as to find
out from the girl's face whether the colonel had told her the truth.

On this particular evening the Chargeboeuf ladies were the first to
arrive. Bathilde, by Vinet's advice, had become more elaborate in her
dress. She now wore a charming gown of blue velveteen, with the same
transparent fichu, garnet pendants in her ears, her hair in ringlets,
the wily _jeannette_ round her throat, black satin slippers, gray silk
stockings, and _gants de Suede_; add to these things the manners of a
queen and the coquetry of a young girl determined to capture Rogron.
Her mother, calm and dignified, retained, as did her daughter, a certain
aristocratic insolence, with which the two women hedged themselves
and preserved the spirit of their caste. Bathilde was a woman of
intelligence, a fact which Vinet alone had discovered during the
two months' stay the ladies had made at his house. When he had fully
fathomed the mind of the girl, wounded and disappointed as it was by
the fruitlessness of her beauty and her youth, and enlightened by the
contempt she felt for the men of a period in which money was the only
idol, Vinet, himself surprised, exclaimed,--

"If I could only have married you, Bathilde, I should to-day be Keeper
of the Seals. I should call myself Vinet de Chargeboeuf, and take my
seat as deputy of the Right."

Bathilde had no vulgar idea in her marriage intentions. She did not
marry to be a mother, nor to possess a husband; she married for freedom,
to gain a responsible position, to be called "madame," and to act as
men act. Rogron was nothing but a name to her; she expected to make
something of the fool,--a voting deputy, for instance, whose instigator
she would be; moreover, she longed to avenge herself on her family, who
had taken no notice of a girl without money. Vinet had much enlarged and
strengthened her ideas by admiring and approving them.

"My dear Bathilde," he said, while explaining to her the influence of
women, and showing her the sphere of action in which she ought to work,
"do you suppose that Tiphaine, a man of the most ordinary capacity,
could ever get to be a judge of the Royal court in Paris by himself? No,
it is Madame Tiphaine who has got him elected deputy, and it is she who
will push him when they get to Paris. Her mother, Madame Roguin, is a
shrewd woman, who does what she likes with the famou