Accompanied by the
taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or
six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more
persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in
life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip
and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent
their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their
neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there
were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal,
keeping an exact account of each person's fortune, striving to control
or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and
blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These
persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant,
sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the
secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the
Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they
absorb.
Accordingly, during every evening of the week, these good devotees,
excited by that need of emotion which exists in all of us, rendered an
exact account of the current condition of the town with a sagacity
worthy of the Council of Ten, and were, in fact, a species of police,
armed with the unerring gift of spying bestowed by passions. When they
had divined the secret meaning of some event their vanity led them to
appropriate to themselves the wisdom of their sanhedrim, and set the
tone to the gossip of their respective spheres.
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