the charms of Adonis. If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as
Attorney-General, she may see him as a handsome youth. Eloquence has
great privileges.--Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition.
She does not like Sancerre, and dreams of the glories of Paris."

"But what interest have you in all this?" said Lousteau. "If she is in
love with the Public Prosecutor!--Ah! you think she will not love him
for long, and you hope to succeed him."

"You who live in Paris," said Gatien, "meet as many different women as
there are days in the year. But at Sancerre, where there are not half
a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant
virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite
distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a
young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at
her secrets, since she must then treat him with some consideration."

"Consideration! So that is what you call it in these parts?" said the
journalist with a smile.

"I should suppose Madame de la Baudraye to have too much good taste to
trouble her head about that ugly ape," said Bianchon.

"Horace," said Lousteau, "look here, O learned interpreter of human
nature, let us lay a trap for the Public Prosecutor; we shall be doing
our friend Gatien a service, and get a laugh out of it. I do not love
Public Prosecutors."

"You have a keen intuition of destiny," said Horace. "But what can we
do?"