when the
world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an
elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a stray rag in the gutter.

Eve herself had wished for the delay. She meant to establish the
little household on the most economical footing, and to buy only strict
necessaries; but what could two lovers refuse to a brother who watched
his sister at her work, and said in tones that came from the heart,
"How I wish I could sew!" The sober, observant David had shared in the
devotion; and yet, since Lucien's triumph, David had watched him with
misgivings; he was afraid that Lucien would change towards them, afraid
that he would look down upon their homely ways. Once or twice, to try
his brother, David had made him choose between home pleasures and the
great world, and saw that Lucien gave up the delights of vanity for
them, and exclaimed to himself, "They will not spoil him for us!" Now
and again the three friends and Mme. Chardon arranged picnic parties in
provincial fashion--a walk in the woods along the Charente, not far from
Angouleme, and dinner out on the grass, David's apprentice bringing the
basket of provisions to some place appointed before-hand; and at night
they would come back, tired somewhat, but the whole excursion had not
cost three francs. On great occasion, when they dined at a _restaurat_,
as it is called, a sort of a country inn, a compromise between a
provincial wineshop and a Parisian _guinguette_, they would spend as
much as five francs, divided between David and the Chardons. David gave
his brother infinite credit for forsaking Mme. de Bargeton and grand
dinners for these days in the country, and the whole party made much of
the great man of Angouleme.

Matters had gone so far, that the new home was very nearly ready, and
David had gone over to Marsac to persuade his father to come to the
wedding, not without a hope that the old man might relent at the sight
of his daughter-in-law, and give something towards the heavy expenses
of the alterations, when there befell one of those events which entirely
change the face of things in a small town.

Lucien and Louise had a spy in Chatelet, a spy who watched, with the
persistence of a hate in which avarice and passion are blended, for
an opportunity of making a scandal. Sixte meant that Mme. de Bargeton
should compromise herself with Lucien in such a way that she should be
"lost," as the saying goes; so he posed as Mme. de Bargeton'