' with Madame and
Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He arrived there in all the glory of
better circumstances. His spectacles were of gold, his waistcoat silk;
a white cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made in
Paris, and a gold watch and chain, made up his apparel. In place of
the former Vinet, pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present
Vinet bore himself with the air and manner of a man of importance; he
marched boldly forward, certain of success, with that peculiar show of
security which belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the
law. His sly little head was well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which
gave him a mincing though frigid look, that made him seem agreeable
in the style of Robespierre. Certainly he would make a fine
attorney-general, endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous
eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of Benjamin Constant. The
bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him had now turned
into soft-spoken perfidy; the poison was transformed into anodyne.

"Good-evening, my dear; how are you?" said Madame de Chargeboeuf,
greeting Sylvie.

Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her bonnet, looked
at herself in the glass, and placed her pretty foot on the fender that
Rogron might admire it.

"What is the matter with you?" she said to him, looking directly in
his face. "You have not bowed to me. Pray why should we put on our
best velvet gowns to please you?"

She pushed past Pierrette to lay down her hat, which the latter took
from her hand, and which she let her take exactly as though she were a
servant. Men are supposed to be ferocious, and tigers too; but neither
tigers, vipers, diplomatists, lawyers, executioners or kings ever
approach, in their greatest atrocities, the gentle cruelty, the
poisoned sweetness, the savage disdain of one young woman for another,
when she thinks herself superior in birth, or fortune, or grace, and
some question of marriage, or precedence, or any of the feminine
rivalries, is raised. The "Thank you, mademoiselle," which Bathilde
said to Pierrette was a poem in many strophes. She was named Bathilde,
and the other Pierrette. She was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain.
Pierrette was small and weak, Bathilde was tall and full of life.
Pierrette was living on charity, Bathilde and her mother lived on
their means. Pierrette wore a stuff gown with a chemisette, Bathilde
made the velvet of hers undulate. Bathilde h