would come in fretting
about a sick hen, and complaining to his sister, who was nagging the
servant as she set the table, of the dampness which was coming out in
spots upon the plaster. The barometer was Rogron's most useful bit of
property. He consulted it at all hours, tapped it familiarly like a
friend, saying: "Vile weather!" to which his sister would reply, "Pooh!
it is only seasonable." If any one called to see him the excellence of
that instrument was his chief topic of conversation.

Breakfast took up some little time; with what deliberation those two
human beings masticated their food! Their digestions were perfect;
cancer of the stomach was not to be dreaded by them. They managed to
get along till twelve o'clock by reading the "Bee-hive" and the
"Constitutionnel." The cost of subscribing to the Parisian paper was
shared by Vinet the lawyer, and Baron Gouraud. Rogron himself carried
the paper to Gouraud, who had been a colonel and lived on the square,
and whose long yarns were Rogron's delight; the latter sometimes puzzled
over the warnings he had received, and asked himself how such a lively
companion could be dangerous. He was fool enough to tell the colonel he
had been warned against him, and to repeat all the "clique" had said.
God knows how the colonel, who feared no one, and was equally to be
dreaded with pistols or a sword, gave tongue about Madame Tiphaine and
her Amadis, and the ministerialists of the Upper town, persons capable
of any villany to get places, and who counted the votes at elections to
suit themselves, etc.

About two o'clock Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy
if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop
him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with _you_?" Then he
would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town.
He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines,
according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking
their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to
him. There happened to be in Provins a few men weary of Parisian life,
quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of the
ignorant Rogron when he heard a deputy-judge named Desfondrilles, more
of an archaeologist than a magistrate, saying to old Monsieur Martener,
a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:--

"Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to
Pro