Luckily for him he
happened to find much to do at Saint-Gatien,--several funerals, a
marriage, and two baptisms. Thus employed he forgot his griefs. When
his stomach told him that dinner was ready he drew out his watch and
saw, not without alarm, that it was some minutes after four. Being
well aware of Mademoiselle Gamard's punctuality, he hurried back to
the house.
He saw at once on passing the kitchen door that the first course had
been removed. When he reached the dining-room the old maid said, with
a tone of voice in which were mingled sour rebuke and joy at being
able to blame him:--
"It is half-past four, Monsieur Birotteau. You know we are not to wait
for you."
The vicar looked at the clock in the dining-room, and saw at once, by
the way the gauze which protected it from dust had been moved, that
his landlady had opened the face of the dial and set the hands in
advance of the clock of the cathedral. He could make no remark. Had he
uttered his suspicion it would only have caused and apparently
justified one of those fierce and eloquent expositions to which
Mademoiselle Gamard, like other women of her class, knew very well how
to give vent in particular cases. The thousand and one annoyances
which a servant will sometimes make her master bear, or a woman her
husband, were instinctively divined by Mademoiselle Gamard and used
upon Birotteau. The way in which she delighted in plotting against the
poor vicar's domestic comfort bore all the marks of what we must call
a profoundly malignant genius.
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