why: Women who want
to love--and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved--have an
instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing
occupation; in spite of superiority, they are all women in the matter
of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine with
a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led
the half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen
insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not
confess her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind--"The
doctor is perhaps the better man, but I do not like him."

Then, again, she reflected on his professional duties, wondering whether
a woman could ever be anything but a _subject_ to a medical man, who saw
so many subjects in the course of a day's work. The first sentence of
the aphorism written by Bianchon in her album was a medical observation
striking so directly at woman, that Dinah could not fail to be hit by
it. And then Bianchon was leaving on the morrow; his practice required
his return. What woman, short of having Cupid's mythological dart in her
heart, could decide in so short a time?

These little things, which lead to such great catastrophes--having been
seen in a mass by Bianchon, he pronounced the verdict he had come to as
to Madame de la Baudraye in a few words to Lousteau, to the journalist's
great amazement.

While the two friends stood talking together, a storm was gathering in
the Sancerre circle, who could not in the least understand Lousteau's
paraphrases and commentaries, and who vented it on their hostess. Far
from finding in his talk the romance which the Public Prosecutor, the
Sous-prefet, the Presiding Judge, and his deputy, Lebas, had discovered
there--to say nothing of Monsieur de la Baudraye and Dinah--the ladies
now gathered round the tea-table, took the matter as a practical joke,
and accused the Muse of Sancerre of having a finger in it. They had all
looked forward to a delightful evening, and had all strained in vain
every faculty of their mind. Nothing makes provincial folks so angry as
the notion of having been a laughing-stock for Paris folks.

Madame Piedefer left the table to say to her daughter, "Do go and talk
to the ladies; they are quite annoyed by your behavior."

Lousteau could not fail to see Dinah's great superiority over the best
women of Sancerre; she was better dressed, her movements were graceful,
her complexion was