remained there the whole evening. Then a friend of his, a certain
Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix, came to see him, and this gave
Mademoiselle Gamard the happiness of forming a card-table; so that
when the vicar went to bed he felt that he had passed a very agreeable
evening. Knowing Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert but
slightly, he saw only the superficial aspects of their characters; few
persons bare their defects at once, they generally take on a becoming
veneer.

The worthy abbe was thus led to suggest to himself the charming plan
of devoting all his evenings to Mademoiselle Gamard, instead of
spending them, as Chapeloud had done, elsewhere. The old maid had for
years been possessed by a desire which grew stronger day by day. This
desire, often formed by old persons and even by pretty women, had
become in Mademoiselle Gamard's soul as ardent a longing as that of
Birotteau for Chapeloud's apartment; and it was strengthened by all
those feelings of pride, egotism, envy, and vanity which pre-exist in
the breasts of worldly people.

This history is of all time; it suffices to widen slightly the narrow
circle in which these personages are about to act to find the
coefficient reasons of events which take place in the very highest
spheres of social life.

Mademoiselle Gamard spent her evenings by rotation in six or eight
different houses. Whether it was that she disliked being obliged to go
out to seek society, and considered that at her age she had a right to
expect some return; or that her pride was wounded at receiving no
company in her house; or that her self-love craved the compliments she
saw her various hostesses receive,--certain it is that her whole