Then the move to the Chateau d'Anzy, the rearrangement of her
collected treasures and curiosities, which derived added value from
the splendid setting which Philibert de Lorme seemed to have planned
on purpose for this museum, occupied her for several months, giving
her leisure to meditate one of those decisive steps that startle the
public, ignorant of the motives which, however, it sometimes discovers
by dint of gossip and suppositions.

Madame de la Baudraye had been greatly struck by the reputation of
Lousteau, who was regarded as a lady's man of the first water in
consequence of his intimacies among actresses; she was anxious to know
him; she read his books, and was fired with enthusiasm, less perhaps
for his talents than for his successes with women; and to attract him
to the country, she started the notion that it was obligatory on
Sancerre to return one of its great men at the elections. She made
Gatien Boirouge write to the great physician Bianchon, whom he claimed
as a cousin through the Popinots. Then she persuaded an old friend of
the departed Madame Lousteau to stir up the journalist's ambitions by
letting him know that certain persons in Sancerre were firmly bent on
electing a deputy from among the distinguished men in Paris.

Tired of her commonplace neighbors, Madame de la Baudraye would thus
at last meet really illustrious men, and might give her fall the
lustre of fame.

Neither Lousteau nor Bianchon replied; they were waiting perhaps till
the holidays. Bianchon, who had won his professor's chair the year
before after a brilliant contest, could not leave his lectures.

In the month of September, when the vintage was at its height, the two