Sylvie and her friend
Celeste Habert were deceived by it; not so Vinet, the wise head of
this doltish circle, among whom no one really coped with him but the
priest,--the colonel being for a long time his ally.
On the other hand the colonel was behaving to Sylvie very much as
Bathilde behaved to Rogron. He put on a clean shirt every evening and
wore velvet stocks, which set off his martial features and the
spotless white of his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique
waistcoats, and caused to be made for him a new surtout of blue cloth,
on which his red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of
doing honor to the new guests Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.
He even refrained from smoking for two hours previous to his
appearance in the Rogrons' salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a
waving line across a cranium which was ochre in tone. He assumed the
air and manner of a party leader, of a man who was preparing to drive
out the enemies of France, the Bourbons, on short, to beat of drum.
The satanic lawyer and the wily colonel played the priest and his
sister a more cruel trick than even the importation of the beautiful
Madame de Chargeboeuf, who was considered by all the Liberal party and
by Madame de Breautey and her aristocratic circle to be far handsomer
than Madame Tiphaine. These two great statesmen of the little
provincial town made everybody believe that the priest was in sympathy
with their ideas; so that before long Provins began to talk of him as
a liberal ecclesiastic.
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