.

This clever ecclesiastic, devoted to the leading society, kind and
obliging to the second, apostolic to the poor and unfortunate, made
himself beloved by the whole town. He was cousin of the miller and
cousin of the Sarcuses, and belonged therefore to the neighborhood and
to its mediocracy. He always dined out and saved expenses; he went to
weddings but came away before the ball; he paid the costs of public
worship, saying, "It is my business." And the parish let him do it,
with the remark, "We have an excellent priest." The bishop, who knew the
Soulanges people and was not at all misled as to the true value of the
abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made religion
acceptable, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy
heads.

It is unnecessary to remark that not only each of these worthy burghers
possessed some one of the special qualifications which are necessary to
existence in the provinces, but also that each cultivated his field in
the domain of vanity without a rival. Pere Guerbet understood finance,
Soudry might have been minister of war; if Cuvier had passed that way
incognito, the leading society of Soulanges would have proved to him
that he knew nothing in comparison with Monsieur Gourdon the doctor.
"Adolphe Nourrit with his thread of a voice," remarked the notary
with patronizing indulgence, "was scarcely worthy to accompany the
nightingale of Soulanges." As to the author of the "Cup-and-Ball" (which
was then being printed at Bournier's), society was satisfied that a poet
of his force could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.

This provincial bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took
the lead through the various superiorities of its members. Therefore
the imagination of those who ever resided, even for a short time, in a
little town of this kind can conceive the air of profound satisfaction
upon the faces of these people, who believed themselves the solar plexus
of France, all of them armed with incredible dexterity and shrewdness to
do mischief,--all, in their wisdom, declaring that the hero of Essling
was a coward, Madame de Montcornet a manoeuvring Parisian, and the Abbe
Brossette an ambitious little priest.

If Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would
have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed; but
fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need
of solitude, in which