but the great affair; and if I'm not mistaken, that
girl is only Tonsard's daughter."

"He is like the chemist who lays in a stock of vipers," said old
Guerbet.

"One would think you were intimate with Monsieur Vermut to hear you
talk," said the doctor, pointing to the little apothecary, who was then
crossing the square.

"Poor fellow!" said the poet, who was suspected of occasionally
sharpening his wit with Madame Vermut; "just look at that waddle of his!
and they say he is learned!"

"Without him," said the justice of the peace, "we should be hard put
to it about post-mortems; he found poison in poor Pigeron's stomach so
cleverly that the chemists of Paris testified in the court at Auxerre
that they couldn't have done better--"

"He didn't find anything at all," said Soudry; "but, as President
Gendrin says, it is a good thing to let people suppose that poison will
always be found--"

"Madame Pigeron was very wise to leave Auxerre," said Madame Vermut;
"she was silly and wicked both. As if it were necessary to have recourse
to drugs to annul a husband! Are not there other ways quite as sure, but
innocent, to rid ourselves of that incumbrance? I would like to have
a man dare to question my conduct! The worthy Monsieur Vermut doesn't
hamper me in the least,--but he has never been ill yet. As for Madame
de Montcornet, just see how she walks about the woods and the hermitage
with that journalist whom she brought from Paris at her own expense, and
how she pets him under the very eyes of the general!"

"At her own expense!" cried Madame Soudry. "Are you sure? If we could
only get proof of it, what a fine subject for an anonymous letter to the
general!"

"The general!" cried Madame Vermut, "he won't interfere with things; he
plays his part."

"What part, my dear?" asked Madame Soudry.

"Oh! the paternal part."

"If poor little Pigeron had had the wisdom to play it, instead of
harassing his wife, he'd be alive now," said the poet.

Madame Soudry leaned over to her neighbor, Monsieur Guerbet, and made
one of those apish grimaces which she had inherited from dear mistress,
together with her silver, by right of conquest, and twisting her face
into a series of them she made him look at Madame Vermut, who was
coquetting with the author of "The Cup-and-Ball."

"What shocking style that woman has! what talk, what manners!" she
said. "I really don't think I can admit her any longer into _our
society_,--especially,"