petty interests of their own little centre, no one in the town
suspected the rivalry of these two men. Monsieur le Chevalier de
Valois occupied a vantage-ground: he had never asked for the hand of
Mademoiselle Cormon; whereas du Bousquier, who entered the lists soon
after his rejection by the most distinguished family in the place, had
been refused. But the chevalier believed that his rival had still such
strong chances of success that he dealt him this coup de Jarnac with a
blade (namely, Suzanne) that was finely tempered for the purpose. The
chevalier had cast his plummet-line into the waters of du Bousquier;
and, as we shall see by the sequel, he was not mistaken in any of his
conjectures.

Suzanne tripped with a light foot from the rue du Cours, by the rue de
la Porte de Seez and the rue du Bercail, to the rue du Cygne, where,
about five years earlier, du Bousquier had bought a little house built
of gray Jura stone, which is something between Breton slate and Norman
granite. There he established himself more comfortably than any
householder in town; for he had managed to preserve certain furniture
and decorations from the days of his splendor. But provincial manners
and morals obscured, little by little, the rays of this fallen
Sardanapalus; these vestiges of his former luxury now produced the
effect of a glass chandelier in a barn. Harmony, that bond of all
work, human or divine, was lacking in great things as well as in
little ones. The stairs, up which everybody mounted without wiping
their feet, were never polished; the walls, painted by some wretched
artisan of the neighborhood, were a terror to the eye; the stone
mantel-piece, ill-carved, "swore" with the handsome clock, which was
further degraded by the company of contemptible candlesticks. Like the
period which du Bousquier himself represented, the house was a jumble
of dirt and magnificence. Being considered a man of leisure, du