of each article under discussion,
where it was manufactured, and what were its various prices. As to
the choicer things, each, they were told, had been used by Monsieur
Tiphaine, or Madame Julliard, or Monsieur the mayor, the notables of the
place. The idea of having things done as the rich bourgeois of Provins
did them carried the day for the contractor.

"Oh, if Monsieur Garceland has it in his house, put it in," said
Mademoiselle Rogron. "It must be all right; his taste is good."

"Sylvie, see, he wants us to have ovolos in the cornice of the
corridor."

"Do you call those ovolos?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"What an odd name! I never heard it before."

"But you have seen the thing?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand Latin?"

"No."

"Well, it means eggs--from the Latin _ovum_."

"What queer fellows you are, you architects!" cried Rogron. "It is
stepping on egg-shells to deal with you."

"Shall we paint the corridor?" asked the builder.

"Good heavens, no!" cried Sylvie. "That would be five hundred francs
more!"

"Oh, but the salon and the staircase are too pretty not to have the
corridor decorated too," said the man. "That little Madame Lesourd had
hers painted last year."

"And now, her husband, as king's attorney, is obliged to leave Provins."

"Ah, he'll be chief justice some of these days," said the builder.

"How about Monsieur Tiphaine?"

"Monsieur Tiphaine? he's got a pretty wife and is sure to get on. 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, M