uence the actions of
others, prognosticating marriages, and blaming the conduct of friends
as sharply as that of enemies. These persons, spread about the town like
the capillary fibres of a plant, sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf
for the dew, the news and the secrets of each household, and transmitted
them mechanically to the Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the
branch the moisture they absorb.

Accordingly, during every evening of the week, these good devotees,
excited by that need of emotion which exists in all of us, rendered
an exact account of the current condition of the town with a sagacity
worthy of the Council of Ten, and were, in fact, a species of police,
armed with the unerring gift of spying bestowed by passions. When they
had divined the secret meaning of some event their vanity led them to
appropriate to themselves the wisdom of their sanhedrim, and set the
tone to the gossip of their respective spheres. This idle but ever busy
fraternity, invisible, yet seeing all things, dumb, but perpetually
talking, possessed an influence which its nonentity seemed to render
harmless, though it was in fact terrible in its effects when it
concerned itself with serious interests. For a long time nothing had
entered the sphere of these existences so serious and so momentous to
each one of them as the struggle of Birotteau, supported by Madame de
Listomere, against Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert. The three
salons of Madame de Listomere and the Demoiselles Merlin de la Blottiere
and de Villenoix being considered as enemies by all the salons which
Mademoiselle Gamard frequented, there was at the bottom of the quarrel
a class sentiment with all its jealousies. It was the old Roman
struggle of people and senate in a molehill, a tempest in a teacup, as
Montesquieu remarked when speaking of the Republic of San Marino, whose
public offices are filled by the day only,--despotic power being easily
seized by any citizen.

But this tempest, petty as it seems, did develop in the souls of these
persons as many passions as would have been called forth by the highest
social interests. It is a mistake to think that none but souls concerned
in mighty projects, which stir their lives and set them foaming, find
time too fleeting. The hours of the Abbe Troubert fled by as eagerly,
laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs and hopes as deep
as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or the statesman. Go