hy you trouble your
heads so much about each other; you waste your time in frivolities."

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say
that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the "funny column" were
incomprehensible at Sancerre.

On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien,
under the guidance of a keeper, to make their way through a little
ravine.

"Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier," said Bianchon, when they had
reached a clearing.

"You may be a great physician," said Gatien, "but you are ignorant of
provincial life. You mean to wait for Monsieur Gravier?--By this time
he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is
within twenty minutes of Anzy by now----" Gatien looked at his watch.
"Good! he will be just in time."

"Where?"

"At the chateau for breakfast," replied Gatien. "Do you suppose I could
rest easy if Madame de la Baudraye were alone with Monsieur de Clagny?
There are two of them now; they will keep an eye on each other. Dinah
will be well guarded."

"Ah, ha! Then Madame de la Baudraye has not yet made up her mind?" said
Lousteau.

"So mamma thinks. For my part, I am afraid that Monsieur de Clagny has
at last succeeded in bewitching Madame de la Baudraye. If he has been
able to show her that he had any chance of putting on the robes of the
Keeper of the Seals, he may have hidden his moleskin complexion, his
terrible eyes, his touzled mane, his voice like a hoarse crier's, his
bony figure, like that of a starveling poet, and have assumed all the
charms of Adonis. If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as Attorney-General,
she may see him as a handsome youth. Eloquence has great
privileges.--Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition. She
does not like Sancerre, and dreams of the glories of Paris."

"But what interest have you in all this?" said Lousteau. "If she is in
love with the Public Prosecutor!--Ah! you think she will not love him
for long, and you hope to succeed him."

"You who live in Paris," said Gatien, "meet as many different women as
there are days in the year. But at Sancerre, where there are not half
a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant
virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite
distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a
young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her
secrets, since she must then