having to Sylvie very much as
Bathilde behaved to Rogron. He put on a clean shirt every evening and
wore velvet stocks, which set off his martial features and the spotless
white of his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique waistcoats,
and caused to be made for him a new surtout of blue cloth, on which his
red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of doing honor to the
new guests Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He even refrained
from smoking for two hours previous to his appearance in the Rogrons'
salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a waving line across a cranium
which was ochre in tone. He assumed the air and manner of a party
leader, of a man who was preparing to drive out the enemies of France,
the Bourbons, on short, to beat of drum.

The satanic lawyer and the wily colonel played the priest and his sister
a more cruel trick than even the importation of the beautiful Madame de
Chargeboeuf, who was considered by all the Liberal party and by Madame
de Breautey and her aristocratic circle to be far handsomer than Madame
Tiphaine. These two great statesmen of the little provincial town made
everybody believe that the priest was in sympathy with their ideas; so
that before long Provins began to talk of him as a liberal ecclesiastic.
As soon as this news reached the bishop Monsieur Habert was sent for and
admonished to cease his visits to the Rogrons; but his sister continued
to go there. Thus the salon Rogron became a fixed fact and a constituted
power.

Before the year was out political intrigues were not less lively than
the matrimonial schemes of the Rogron salon. While the selfish interests
hidden in these hearts were struggling in deadly combat the events
which resulted from them had a fatal celebrity. Everybody knows that
the Villele ministry was overthrown by the elections of 1826. Vinet, the
Liberal candidate at Provins, who had borrowed money of his notary
to buy a domain which made him eligible for election, came very near
defeating Monsieur Tiphaine, who saved his election by only two votes.
The headquarters of the Liberals was the Rogron salon; among the
_habitues_ were the notary Cournant and his wife, and Doctor Neraud,
whose youth was said to have been stormy, but who now took a serious
view of life; he gave himself up to study and was, according to
all Liberals, a far more capable man than Monsieur Martener, the
aristocratic physician. As for the Rogrons, they no more understoo