in inventing these fables?

As he remained silent Auguste resumed:

"Monsieur may trust me, I am discreet, and I always defend him against
Anne, who is spiteful as a cat. She says monsieur is a Prussian spy and
a fortune-hunter, and is simply preying upon madame. And she calls
monsieur something still worse, which I would not like to repeat. It is
a shame, for monsieur has never done her any harm, and it would not be
quite so bad if she only let out her vile temper before us, but she
slanders monsieur to outsiders and gives him a dreadfully bad name."

"I am sorry that you should retail such gossip to me," said Wilhelm,
making a great effort to appear unmoved.

"I considered it my duty, as an honest man. I am not saying more than
the truth about the maid, and am perfectly ready to repeat it all to
her face. Madame la Comtesse is really wrong in keeping the viper.
There are plenty of respectable and handy young women who would think
themselves lucky to be taken into madame's service. I have a cousin,
for instance, who has been in the best houses--Anne couldn't hold a
candle to her; if monsieur would recommend her to Madame la Comtesse--"

"I can do nothing in the matter," said Wilhelm brusquely.

He turned his back upon the man and absorbed himself pointedly in his
books. Auguste stood a moment, but seeing that Wilhelm would take no
further notice of him, shrugged his shoulders and left the room.

Wilhelm was surprised himself at the impression the man's information
had made upon him. Dismay, anger, and shame struggled for the mastery
in his breast. What a suffocating air he breathed in this house! How
vile and underhand and insincere were the people by whom he was
surrounded! But was this true that Auguste told him? Did he not lie and
slander like the rest? Was he not doing the servant far too great an
honor by letting his mind dwell on the low gossip of the servants'
hall? He felt a kind of dim revolt against his own excitement which he
felt to be unworthy of him, and, under other circumstances, he really
would have been too proud to allow such tale-bearing to exert the
slightest influence upon his thoughts or actions. But, in his present
state of mind, Auguste's words sounded to him like a brutal translation
of his own thoughts, condemning him for his cowardice in submitting to
his humiliating position, and he recognized more clearly than ever that
he must fight his way out of this degradation.

It was not eas