little La Baudraye having arranged a day's sport for the Parisians
--less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was
delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste
land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost
some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of
thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the returns of the estate of
Anzy.

"Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?"
asked Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur Gravier.

"Why he told us that he was obliged to sit to-day; the minor cases are
before the Court," replied the other.

"And did you believe that?" cried Gatien. "Well, my papa said to me,
'Monsieur Lebas will not join you early, for Monsieur de Clagny has
begged him as his deputy to sit for him!'"

"Indeed!" said Gravier, changing countenance. "And Monsieur de la
Baudraye is gone to La Charite!"

"But why do you meddle in such matters?" said Bianchon to Gatien.

"Horace is right," said Lousteau. "I cannot imagine why you trouble
your heads so much about each other; you waste your time in
frivolities."

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say that
newspaper epigrams and the satire of the "funny column" were
incomprehensible at Sancerre.