Mme. de Chandour,
harkening to "M. Chatelet's" counsels, determined to erect a rival altar
by receiving on Wednesdays. Now Mme. de Bargeton's salon was open every
evening; and those who frequented it were so wedded to their ways, so
accustomed to meet about the same tables, to play the familiar game
of backgammon, to see the same faces and the same candle sconces night
after night; and afterwards to cloak and shawl, and put on overshoes and
hats in the old corridor, that they were quite as much attached to the
steps of the staircase as to the mistress of the house.

"All resigned themselves to endure the songster" (_chardonneret_) "of
the sacred grove," said Alexandre de Brebian, which was witticism number
two. Finally, the president of the agricultural society put an end to
the sedition by remarking judicially that "before the Revolution the
greatest nobles admitted men like Dulcos and Grimm and Crebillon
to their society--men who were nobodies, like this little poet
of L'Houmeau; but one thing they never did, they never received
tax-collectors, and, after all, Chatelet is only a tax-collector."

Du Chatelet suffered for Chardon. Every one turned the cold shoulder
upon him; and Chatelet was conscious that he was attacked. When Mme.
de Bargeton called him "M. Chatelet," he swore to himself that he would
possess her; and now he entered into the views of the mistress of the
house, came to the support of the young poet, and declared himself
Lucien's friend. The great diplomatist, overlooked by the shortsighted
Emperor, made much of Lucien, and declared himself his friend! To launch
the poet into society, he gave a dinner, and asked all the authorities
to meet him--the prefect, the receiver-general, the colonel in command
of the garrison, the head of the Naval School, the president of the
Court, and so forth. The poet, poor fellow, was feted so magnificently,
and so belauded, that anybody but a young man of two-and-twenty would
have shrewdly suspected a hoax. After dinner, Chatelet drew his rival on
to recite _The Dying Sardanapalus_, the masterpiece of the hour; and the
headmaster of the school, a man of a phlegmatic temperament, applauded
with both hands, and vowed that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau had done nothing
finer. Sixte, Baron du Chatelet, thought in his heart that this slip
of a rhymster would wither incontinently in a hothouse of adulation;
perhaps he hoped that when the poet's head was turned with brilliant
dreams,