ch armed with a huge folio
which they laid on one of the side tables in the dining-room.

"What's all that?" asked Mademoiselle Gamard, in a sharp voice,
addressing Birotteau. "I hope you are not going to litter up my
dining-room with your old books!"

"They are books I wanted," replied the Abbe Troubert. "Monsieur
Birotteau has been kind enough to lend them to me."

"I might have guessed it," she said, with a contemptuous smile.
"Monsieur Birotteau doesn't often read books of that size."

"How are you, mademoiselle?" said the vicar, in a mellifluous voice.

"Not very well," she replied, shortly. "You woke me up last night out
of my first sleep, and I was wakeful for the rest of the night." Then,
sitting down, she added, "Gentlemen, the milk is getting cold."

Stupefied at being so ill-naturedly received by his landlady, from whom
he half expected an apology, and yet alarmed, like all timid people at
the prospect of a discussion, especially if it relates to themselves,
the poor vicar took his seat in silence. Then, observing in Mademoiselle
Gamard's face the visible signs of ill-humour, he was goaded into a
struggle between his reason, which told him that he ought not to submit
to such discourtesy from a landlady, and his natural character, which
prompted him to avoid a quarrel.

Torn by this inward misery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively the
broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom immemorial,
Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time, without regard
to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on its surface. The
priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated arm-chairs on either
side of the square table, the head of which was taken by the landlady,
who seemed to dominate the whole from a high chair raised on casters,
filled with cushions, and standing very near to the dining-room stove.
This room and the salon were on the ground-floor beneath the salon and
bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.

When the vicar had received his cup of coffee, duly sugared, from
Mademoiselle Gamard, he felt chilled to the bone at the grim silence
in which he was forced to proceed with the usually gay function of
breakfast. He dared not look at Troubert's dried-up features, nor at
the threatening visage of the old maid; and he therefore turned, to
keep himself in countenance, to the plethoric pug which was lying on
a cushion near the stove,--a position that victim of obesity seldom
qui