Following the example of the recorder, each guest capped his
neighbor's joke with another: Du Bousquier was a father, but not a
confessor; he was father less; he was father LY; he was not a reverend
father; nor yet a conscript-father--

"Nor can he be a foster-father," said the Abbe de Sponde, with a
gravity which stopped the laughter.

"Nor a noble father," added the chevalier.

The Church and the nobility descended thus into the arena of puns,
without, however, losing their dignity.

"Hush!" exclaimed the recorder of mortgages. "I hear the creaking of
du Bousquier's boots."

It usually happens that a man is ignorant of rumors that are afloat
about him. A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate
and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing
about it. Now the innocent du Bousquier was superb in his ignorance.
No one had told him as yet of Suzanne's revelations; he therefore
appeared very jaunty and slightly conceited when the company, leaving
the dining-room, returned to the salon for their coffee; several other
guests had meantime assembled for the evening. Mademoiselle Cormon,
from a sense of shamefacedness, dared not look at the terrible
seducer. She seized upon Athanase, and began to lecture him with the
queerest platitudes about royalist politics and religious morality.
Not possessing, like the Chevalier de Valois, a snuff-box adorned with
a princess, by the help of which he could stand this torrent of
silliness, the poor poet listened to the words of her whom he loved