d not take much notice of Vermut, and
the second-class society took none at all. The instinct of the first may
have led them to perceive the real superiority of this thinker, who said
little but smiled at their absurdities so satirically that they first
doubted his capacity and then whispered tales against it; as for the
other class they took no notice of him one way or the other.

Vermut was the butt of Madame Soudry's salon. No society is complete
without a victim,--without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and
protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his
cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his little green surtout
spotted.

The little man, gifted with the patience of a chemist, could not enjoy
(that is the term employed in the provinces to express the abolition of
domestic rule) Madame Vermut,--a charming woman, a lively woman, capital
company (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say nothing), a
woman who railed at her husband, annoyed him with epigrams, and declared
him to be an imbecile unable to distil anything but dulness. Madame
Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the
life and soul of amusement and who set things going. She supplied the
salt of her little world, kitchen-salt, it is true; her jokes were
somewhat broad, but society forgave them; though she was capable of
saying to the cure Taupin, a man of seventy years of age, with white
hair, "Hold your tongue, my lad."

The miller of Soulanges, possessing an income of fifty thousand francs,
had an only daughter whom Lupin desired for his son Amaury, since he had
lost the hope of marrying him to Gaubertin's daughter. This miller, a
Sarcus-Taupin, was the Nucingen of the little town. He was supposed to
be thrice a millionaire; but he never transacted business with others,
and thought only of grinding his wheat and keeping a monopoly of it;
his most noticeable point was a total absence of politeness and good
manners.

The elder Guerbet, brother of the post-master at Conches, possessed
an income of ten thousand francs, besides his salary as collector. The
Gourdons were rich; the doctor had married the only daughter of old
Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled, keeper of the forests and streams, whom the
family were now _expecting to die_, while the poet had married the niece
and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the curate of Soulanges, a stout
priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese