"All that put together won't make thirty thousand a year, and suitors
are already coming forward who have as much as that, not counting
their position," returned Madame Marion.

"And?" asked the colonel.

"They have been refused."

"Then what do the Beauvisage family want?" said the colonel, looking
alternately at his son and sister.

It may seem extraordinary that Colonel Giguet, the brother of Madame
Marion in whose house the society of Arcis had met for twenty-four
years, and whose salon was the echo of all reports, all scandals, and
all the gossip of the department of the Aube,--a good deal of it being
there manufactured,--should be ignorant of facts of this nature. But
his ignorance will seem natural when we mention that this noble relic
of the Napoleonic legions went to bed at night and rose in the morning
with the chickens, as all old persons should do if they wish to live
out their lives. He was never present at the intimate conversations
which went on in the salon. In the provinces there are two sorts of
intimate conversation,--one, which is held officially when all the
company are gathered together, playing at cards or conversing; the
other, which _simmers_, like a well made soup, when three or four
friends remain around the fireplace, friends who can be trusted to
repeat nothing of what is said beyond their own limits.

For nine years, ever since the triumph of his political ideas, the
colonel had lived almost entirely outside of social life. Rising with