ed!' said he, 'so little married.'"

Even the rigid Madame Piedefer could not repress a smile.

"I should not be surprised to see Monsieur de Clagny mounted on my pony
to complete the escort," said Dinah.

"Well, if the Public Prosecutor does not pursue us, you can get rid
of this little fellow at Sancerre. Bianchon must, of course, have left
something behind on his table--the notes for the first lecture of his
course--and you can ask Gatien to go back to Anzy to fetch it."

This simple little plot put Madame de la Baudraye into high spirits.
From the road between Anzy to Sancerre, a glorious landscape frequently
comes into view, of the noble stretches of the Loire, looking like
a lake, and it was got over very pleasantly, for Dinah was happy in
finding herself well understood. Love was discussed in theory, a subject
allowing lovers _in petto_ to take the measure, as it were, of each
other's heart. The journalist took a tone of refined corruption to prove
that love obeys no law, that the character of the lovers gives infinite
variety to its incidents, that the circumstances of social life add to
the multiplicity of its manifestations, that in love all is possible and
true, and that any given woman, after resisting every temptation and the
seductions of the most passionate lover, may be carried off her feet in
the course of a few hours by a fancy, an internal whirlwind of which God
alone would ever know the secret!

"Why," said he, "is not that the key to all the adventures we have
talked over these three days past?"

For these three days, indeed, Dinah's lively imagination had been
full of the most insidious romances, and the conversation of the two
Parisians had affected the woman as the most mischievous reading might
have done. Lousteau watched the effects of this clever manoeuvre, to
seize the moment when his prey, whose readiness to be caught was hidden
under the abstraction caused by irresolution, should be quite dizzy.

Dinah wished to show La Baudraye to her two visitors, and the farce was
duly played out of remembering the papers left by Bianchon in his room
at Anzy. Gatien flew off at a gallop to obey his sovereign; Madame
Piedefer went to do some shopping in Sancerre; and Dinah went on to
Cosne alone with the two friends. Lousteau took his seat by the lady,
Bianchon riding backwards. The two friends talked affectionately
and with deep compassion for the fate of this choice nature so ill
understood and i