himself displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances
not necessary to here report) considered himself justified in
believing in the science of anagrams. None of this anagrams had ever
failed. The clerks in the government office had laughed at him when,
demanding an anagram on the name of the poor helpless
Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard, he had produced, "J'amassai une si
grande fortune"; and the event had justified him after the lapse of
ten years! Theodose, on several occasions, had made advances to the
jovial secretary of the mayor's office, and had felt himself rebuffed
by a coldness which was not natural in so sociable a man. When the
game of bouillotte came to an end, Colleville seized the moment to
draw Thuillier into the recess of a window and say to him:--

"You are letting that lawyer get too much foothold in your house; he
kept the ball in his own hands all the evening."

"Thank you, my friend; forewarned is forearmed," replied Thuillier,
inwardly scoffing at Colleville.

Theodose, who was talking at the moment to Madame Colleville, had his
eye on the two men, and, with the same prescience by which women know
when and how they are spoken of, he perceived that Colleville was
trying to injure him in the mind of the weak and silly Thuillier.
"Madame," he said in Flavie's ear, "if any one here is capable of
appreciating you it is certainly I. You seem to me a pearl dropped
into the mire. You say you are forty-two, but a woman is no older than
she looks, and many women of thirty would be thankful to have your
figure and that noble countenance, where love has passed without ever
filling the void in your heart. You have given yourself to God, I
know, and I have too much religion myself to regret it, but I also