"
The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the
persistence with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to
the dining-room with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out
when they saw him: "What _is_ the matter, Monsieur Birotteau?"
The abbe, in despair, sat down without a word, so crushed was he by
the vague presence of approaching disaster. But after breakfast, when
his friends gathered round him before a comfortable fire, Birotteau
naively related the history of his troubles. His hearers, who were
beginning to weary of the monotony of a country-house, were keenly
interested in a plot so thoroughly in keeping with the life of the
provinces. They all took sides with the abbe against the old maid.
"Don't you see, my dear friend," said Madame de Listomere, "that the
Abbe Troubert wants your apartment?"
Here the historian ought to sketch this lady; but it occurs to him
that even those who are ignorant of Sterne's system of "cognomology,"
cannot pronounce the three words "Madame de Listomere" without
picturing her to themselves as noble and dignified, softening the
sternness of rigid devotion by the gracious elegance and the courteous
manners of the old monarchical regime; kind, but a little stiff;
slightly nasal in voice; allowing herself the perusal of "La Nouvelle
Heloise"; and still wearing her own hair.
"The Abbe Birotteau must not yield to that old vixen," cried Monsieur
de Listomere, a lieutenant in the navy who was spending a furlough
with his aunt.
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