trousers, and neat, tightly-fitting coats; he wore a fashionable silk
tie slipped through a diamond ring, while the lawyer never dressed in
anything but black--coat, trousers, and waistcoat alike, and those
often shabby.

These four men were the first to go into ecstasies over Dinah's
cultivation, good taste, and refinement, and pronounced her a woman of
most superior mind. Then the women said to each other, "Madame de la
Baudraye must laugh at us behind our back."

This view, which was more or less correct, kept them from visiting at
La Baudraye. Dinah, attainted and convicted of pedantry, because she
spoke grammatically, was nicknamed the Sappho of Saint-Satur. At last
everybody made insolent game of the great qualities of the woman who
had thus roused the enmity of the ladies of Sancerre. And they ended
by denying a superiority--after all, merely comparative!--which
emphasized their ignorance, and did not forgive it. Where the whole
population is hunch-backed, a straight shape is the monstrosity; Dinah
was regarded as monstrous and dangerous, and she found herself in a
desert.

Astonished at seeing the women of the neighborhood only at long
intervals, and for visits of a few minutes, Dinah asked Monsieur de
Clagny the reason of this state of things.

"You are too superior a woman to be liked by other women," said the
lawyer.

Monsieur Gravier, when questioned by the forlorn fair, only, after
much entreaty, replied: