pute," said
Monsieur Caron, "has sent me to come to an understanding with you."

"Well, if you will have the goodness to return to-morrow," said the
abbe, "I shall then have taken advice in the matter."

The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the persistence
with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to the dining-room
with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out when they saw him:
"What _is_ the matter, Monsieur Birotteau?"

The abbe, in despair, sat down without a word, so crushed was he by the
vague presence of approaching disaster. But after breakfast, when his
friends gathered round him before a comfortable fire, Birotteau naively
related the history of his troubles. His hearers, who were beginning to
weary of the monotony of a country-house, were keenly interested in a
plot so thoroughly in keeping with the life of the provinces. They all
took sides with the abbe against the old maid.

"Don't you see, my dear friend," said Madame de Listomere, "that the
Abbe Troubert wants your apartment?"

Here the historian ought to sketch this lady; but it occurs to him that
even those who are ignorant of Sterne's system of "cognomology," cannot
pronounce the three words "Madame de Listomere" without picturing her
to themselves as noble and dignified, softening the sternness of rigid
devotion by the gracious elegance and the courteous manners of the old
monarchical regime; kind, but a little stiff; slightly nasal in voice;
allowing herself the perusal of "La Nouvelle Heloise"; and still wearing
her own hair.

"The Abbe Birotteau must not yield to that old vixen," cried Monsieur de
Listomere, a lieutenant in the navy who was spending a furlough with
his aunt. "If the vicar has pluck and will follow my suggestions he will
soon recover his tranquillity."

All present began to analyze the conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard with the
keen perceptions which characterize provincials, to whom no one can deny
the talent of knowing how to lay bare the most secret motives of human
actions.

"You don't see the whole thing yet," said an old landowner who knew the
region well. "There is something serious behind all this which I can't
yet make out. The Abbe Troubert is too deep to be fathomed at once. Our
dear Birotteau is at the beginning of his troubles. Besides, would he
be left in peace and comfort even if he did give up his lodging to
Troubert? I doubt it. If Caron came here to tell you that you int