One morning as
she left Saint-Gatien, after Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle
Salomon had spent a few evenings with her and with the faithful and
patient Troubert, she said to certain of her good friends whom she met
at the church door, and whose slave she had hitherto considered
herself, that those who wished to see her could certainly come once a
week to her house, where she had friends enough to make a card-table;
she could not leave the Abbe Birotteau; Mademoiselle Salomon had not
missed a single evening that week; she was devoted to friends; and--et
cetera, et cetera. Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and
softly persuasive because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged
to the most aristocatic society in Tours. For though Mademoiselle
Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship
for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that,
thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great
desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of
Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other
devout ladies who were in the habit of receiving the pious and
ecclesiastical society of Tours.
But alas! the abbe Birotteau himself caused this cherished hope to
miscarry. Now if those persons who in the course of their lives have
attained to the enjoyment of a long desired happiness and have
therefore comprehended the joy of the vicar when he stepped into
Chapeloud's vacant place, they will also have gained some faint idea
of Mademoiselle Gamard's distress at the overthrow of her favorite
plan.
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