He'll go to Paris. Shall we paint the corridor?"

"Yes, yes," said Rogron. "The Lesourds must be made to see that we are
as good as they."

The first year after the Rogrons returned to Provins was entirely
taken up by such discussions, by the pleasure of watching the workmen,
by the surprise occasioned to the townspeople and the replies to
questions of all kinds which resulted therefrom, and also by the
attempts made by Sylvie and her brother to be socially intimate with
the principal families of Provins.

The Rogrons had never gone into any society; they had never left their
shop, knowing absolutely no one in Paris, and now they were athirst
for the pleasures of social life. On their arrival in Provins they
found their former masters in Paris (long since returned to the
provinces), Monsieur and Madame Julliard, lately of the "Chinese
Worm," their children and grandchildren; the Guepin family, or rather
the Guepin clan, the youngest scion of which now kept the "Three
Distaffs"; and thirdly, Madame Guenee from whom they had purchased the
"Family Sister," and whose three daughters were married and settled in
Provins. These three races, Julliard, Guepin, and Guenee, had spread
through the town like dog-grass through a lawn. The mayor, Monsieur
Garceland, was the son-in-law of Monsieur Guepin; the curate, Abbe
Peroux, was own brother to Madame Julliard; the judge, Monsieur
Tiphaine junior, was brother to Madame Guenee, who signed herself
"_nee_ Tiphaine."

The queen of the town was the beautiful Madame Tiphaine junior, only
daughter of Madame Roguin, the rich wife of a former notary in Paris,
whose name was never mentioned. Clever, delicate, and pretty, married
in the provinces to please her mother, who for special reasons did not
want her with her, and took her from a convent only a few days before
the wedding, Melanie Tiphaine considered herself an exile in Provins,
where she behaved to admiration. Handsomely dowered, she still had
hopes. As for Monsieur Tiphaine, his old father had made to his eldest
daughter Madame Guenee such advances on her inheritance that an estate
worth eight thousand francs a year, situated within fifteen miles of
Provins, was to come wholly to him. Consequently the Tiphaines would
possess, sooner or later, some forty thousand francs a year, and were
not "badly off," as they say. The one overwhelming desire of the
beautiful Madame Tiphaine was to get Monsieur Tiphaine elected deputy.
As dep