e causes of it. Niece, you are president of the Maternity
Society; you must succor that poor girl, who will now find it difficult
to marry."

"Poor child!" ejaculated Mademoiselle Cormon.

"Do you suppose du Bousquier would marry her?" asked the judge.

"If he is an honorable man he ought to do so," said Madame Granson; "but
really, to tell the truth, my dog has better morals than he--"

"Azor is, however, a good purveyor," said the recorder of mortgages,
with the air of saying a witty thing.

At dessert du Bousquier was still the topic of conversation, having
given rise to various little jokes which the wine rendered sparkling.
Following the example of the recorder, each guest capped his neighbor's
joke with another: Du Bousquier was a father, but not a confessor; he
was father less; he was father LY; he was not a reverend father; nor yet
a conscript-father--

"Nor can he be a foster-father," said the Abbe de Sponde, with a gravity
which stopped the laughter.

"Nor a noble father," added the chevalier.

The Church and the nobility descended thus into the arena of puns,
without, however, losing their dignity.

"Hush!" exclaimed the recorder of mortgages. "I hear the creaking of du
Bousquier's boots."

It usually happens that a man is ignorant of rumors that are afloat
about him. A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate
and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing about
it. Now the innocent du Bousquier was superb in his ignorance. No one
had told him as yet of Suzanne's revelations; he therefore appeared very
jaunty and slightly conceited when the company, leaving the dining-room,
returned to the salon for their coffee; several other guests had
meantime assembled for the evening. Mademoiselle Cormon, from a sense of
shamefacedness, dared not look at the terrible seducer. She seized upon
Athanase, and began to lecture him with the queerest platitudes about
royalist politics and religious morality. Not possessing, like the
Chevalier de Valois, a snuff-box adorned with a princess, by the help of
which he could stand this torrent of silliness, the poor poet listened
to the words of her whom he loved with a stupid air, gazing, meanwhile,
at her enormous bust, which held itself before him in that still repose
which is the attribute of all great masses. His love produced in him a
sort of intoxication which changed the shrill voice of the old maid into
a soft murmur, and her f