when tea and some pitiable attempts at pastry appeared to
grace the occasion.

Once a quarter the du Roncerets gave a grand three-course dinner,
which made a great sensation in the town, a dinner served up in
execrable ware, but prepared with the science for which the provincial
cook is remarkable. It was a Gargantuan repast, which lasted for six
whole hours, and by abundance the President tried to vie with du
Croisier's elegance.

And so du Ronceret's life and its accessories were just what might
have been expected from his character and his false position. He felt
dissatisfied at home without precisely knowing what was the matter;
but he dared not go to any expense to change existing conditions, and
was only too glad to put by seven or eight thousand francs every year,
so as to leave his son Fabien a handsome private fortune. Fabien du
Ronceret had no mind for the magistracy, the bar, or the civil
service, and his pronounced turn for doing nothing drove his parent to
despair.

On this head there was rivalry between the President and the
Vice-President, old M. Blondet. M. Blondet, for a long time past, had
been sedulously cultivating an acquaintance between his son and the
Blandureau family. The Blandureaus were well-to-do linen
manufacturers, with an only daughter, and it was on this daughter that
the President had fixed his choice of a wife for Fabien. Now, Joseph
Blondet's marriage with Mlle. Blandureau depended on his nomination to
the post which his father, old Blondet, hoped to obtain for him when
he himself should retire. But President du Ronceret, in underhand
ways, was thwarting the old man's plans, and working indirectly upon
the Blandureaus. Indeed, if it had not been for this affair of young
d'Esgrignon's, the astute President might have cut them out, father
and son, for their rivals were very much richer.

M. Blondet, the victim of the machiavelian President's intrigues, was
one of the curious figures which lie buried away in the provinces like
old coins in a crypt. He was at that time a man of sixty-seven or
thereabouts, but he carried his years well; he was very tall, and in
build reminded you of the canons of the good old times. The smallpox
had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of
his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance
by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused
red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with