adame, and you will set things
right with Mademoiselle Gamard. Ask the Abbe Troubert, when you meet him
at the archbishop's, if he can play whist. He will say yes. Then invite
him to your salon, where he wants to be received; he'll be sure to come.
You are a woman, and you can certainly win a priest to your interests.
When the baron is promoted, his uncle peer of France, and Troubert
a bishop, you can make Birotteau a canon if you choose. Meantime
yield,--but yield gracefully, all the while with a slight menace. Your
family can give Troubert quite as much support as he can give you.
You'll understand each other perfectly on that score. As for you,
sailor, carry your deep-sea line about you."

"Poor Birotteau?" said the baroness.

"Oh, get rid of him at once," replied the old man, as he rose to take
leave. "If some clever Radical lays hold of that empty head of his, he
may cause you much trouble. After all, the court would certainly give a
verdict in his favour, and Troubert must fear that. He may forgive
you for beginning the struggle, but if they were defeated he would be
implacable. I have said my say."

He snapped his snuff-box, put on his overshoes, and departed.

The next day after breakfast the baroness took the vicar aside and said
to him, not without visible embarrassment:--

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, you will think what I am about to ask of
you very unjust and very inconsistent; but it is necessary, both for you
and for us, that your lawsuit with Mademoiselle Gamard be withdrawn by
resigning your claims, and also that you should leave my house."

As he heard these words the poor abbe turned pale.

"I am," she continued, "the innocent cause of your misfortunes, and,
moreover, if it had not been for my nephew you would never have begun
this lawsuit, which has now turned to your injury and to ours. But
listen to me."

She told him succinctly the immense ramifications of the affair, and
explained the serious nature of its consequences. Her own meditations
during the night had told her something of the probable antecedents of
Troubert's life; she was able, without misleading Birotteau, to show
him the net so ably woven round him by revenge, and to make him see the
power and great capacity of his enemy, whose hatred to Chapeloud, under
whom he had been forced to crouch for a dozen years, now found vent in
seizing Chapeloud's property and in persecuting Chapeloud in the person
of his friend. The harmless B