Clever, delicate, and pretty, married
in the provinces to please her mother, who for special reasons did not
want her with her, and took her from a convent only a few days before
the wedding, Melanie Tiphaine considered herself an exile in Provins,
where she behaved to admiration. Handsomely dowered, she still had
hopes. As for Monsieur Tiphaine, his old father had made to his eldest
daughter Madame Guenee such advances on her inheritance that an estate
worth eight thousand francs a year, situated within fifteen miles of
Provins, was to come wholly to him. Consequently the Tiphaines would
possess, sooner or later, some forty thousand francs a year, and were
not "badly off," as they say. The one overwhelming desire of the
beautiful Madame Tiphaine was to get Monsieur Tiphaine elected deputy.
As deputy he would become a judge in Paris; and she was firmly
resolved to push him up into the Royal courts. For these reasons she
tickled all vanities and strove to please all parties; and--what is
far more difficult--she succeeded. Twice a week she received the
bourgeoisie of Provins at her house in the Upper town. This
intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder
or misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified
everybody's self-love, and petted their hobbies; serious with the
serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay
with young wives and disposed to help them, gracious to all,--in
short, a pearl, a treasure, the pride of Provins.
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