ter reading an article in the new paper aimed
at her and at Julliard junior, she remarked: "Unfortunately for me, I
forgot that there is always a scoundrel close to a dupe, and that fools
are magnets to clever men of the fox breed."

As soon as the "Courrier" was fairly launched on a radius of fifty
miles, Vinet bought a new coat and decent boots, waistcoats, and
trousers. He set up the gray slouch hat sacred to liberals, and showed
his linen. His wife took a servant, and appeared in public dressed
as the wife of a prominent man should be; her caps were pretty. Vinet
proved grateful--out of policy. He and his friend Cournant, the liberal
notary and the rival of the ministerial notary Auffray, became the close
advisers of the Rogrons, to whom they were able to do a couple of signal
services. The leases granted by old Rogron to their father in 1815,
when matters were at a low ebb, were about to expire. Horticulture and
vegetable gardening had developed enormously in the neighborhood of
Provins. The lawyer and notary set to work to enable the Rogrons to
increase their rentals. Vinet won two lawsuits against two districts on
a question of planting trees, which involved five hundred poplars. The
proceeds of the poplars, added to the savings of the brother and sister,
who for the last three years had laid by six thousand a year at high
interest, was wisely invested in the purchase of improved lands. Vinet
also undertook and carried out the ejectment of certain peasants to whom
the elder Rogron had lent money on their farms, and who had strained
every nerve to pay off the debt, but in vain. The cost of the Rogrons'
fine house was thus in a measure recouped. Their landed property, lying
around Provins and chosen by their father with the sagacious eye of an
innkeeper, was divided into small holdings, the largest of which did
not exceed five acres, and rented to safe tenants, men who owned other
parcels of land, that were ample security for their leases. These
investments brought in, by 1826, five thousand francs a year. Taxes were
charged to the tenants, and there were no buildings needing insurance or
repairs.

By the end of the second period of Pierrette's stay in Provins life had
become so hard for her, the cold indifference of all who came to the
house, the silly fault-finding, and the total absence of affection on
the part of her cousins grew so bitter, she was conscious of a chill
dampness like that of a grave creeping ro