in the
affair, went first to tell the great news at the club, and thence from
house to house, Chatelet hastening to say that _he_ had seen nothing;
but by putting himself out of court, he egged Stanislas on to talk, he
drew him on to add fresh details; and Stanislas, thinking himself very
witty, added a little to the tale every time that he told it. Every
one flocked to Amelie's house that evening, for by that time the
most exaggerated versions of the story were in circulation among the
Angouleme nobility, every narrator having followed Stanislas' example.
Women and men were alike impatient to know the truth; and the women who
put their hands before their faces and shrieked the loudest were none
other than Mesdames Amelie, Zephirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, all with
more or less heavy indictments of illicit love laid to their charge.
There were variations in every key upon the painful theme.

"Well, well," said one of the ladies, "poor Nais! have you heard about
it? I do not believe it myself; she has a whole blameless record behind
her; she is far too proud to be anything but a patroness to M. Chardon.
Still, if it is true, I pity her with all my heart."

"She is all the more to be pitied because she is making herself
frightfully ridiculous; she is old enough to be M. Lulu's mother, as
Jacques called him. The little poet it twenty-two at most; and Nais,
between ourselves, is quite forty."

"For my own part," said M. du Chatelet, "I think that M. de Rubempre's
position in itself proves Nais' innocence. A man does not go down on his
knees to ask for what he has had already."

"That is as may be!" said Francis, with levity that brought Zephirine's
disapproving glance down on him.

"Do just tell us how it really was," they besought Stanislas, and formed
a small, secret committee in a corner of the salon.

Stanislas, in the long length, had put together a little story full of
facetious suggestions, and accompanied it with pantomime, which made the
thing prodigiously worse.

"It is incredible!"

"At midday?"

"Nais was the last person whom I should have suspected!"

"What will she do now?"

Then followed more comments, and suppositions without end. Chatelet took
Mme. de Bargeton's part; but he defended her so ill, that he stirred the
fire of gossip instead of putting it out.

Lili, disconsolate over the fall of the fairest angel in the Angoumoisin
hierarchy, went, dissolved in tears, to carry the news to the pala