a
dignified reserve. M. de Pimentel and M. de Rastignac, for instance,
were addressed by their names in full, and no length of acquaintance
had brought their wives and daughters into the select coterie of
Angouleme; both families were too nearly connected with the Court to
compromise themselves through provincial follies.

The Prefect and the General in command of the garrison were the last
comers, and with them came the country gentleman who had brought the
treatise on silkworms to David that very morning. Evidently he was the
mayor of some canton or other, and a fine estate was his sufficient
title to gentility; but from his appearance, it was plain that he was
quite unused to polite society. He looked uneasy in his clothes, he
was at a loss to know what to do with his hands, he shifted about from
one foot to another as he spoke, and half rose and sat down again when
anybody spoke to him. He seemed ready to do some menial service; he
was obsequious, nervous, and grave by turns, laughing eagerly at every
joke, listening with servility; and occasionally, imagining that
people were laughing at him, he assumed a knowing air. His treatise
weighed upon his mind; again and again he tried to talk about
silkworms; but the luckless wight happened first upon M. de Bartas,
who talked music in reply, and next on M. de Saintot, who quoted
Cicero to him; and not until the evening was half over did the mayor
meet with sympathetic listeners in Mme. and Mlle. du Brossard, a
widowed gentlewoman and her daughter.

Mme. and Mlle. du Brossard were not the least interesting persons in
the clique, but their story may be told in a single phrase--they were
as poor as they were noble. In their dress there was just that tinge
of pretension which betrayed carefully hidden penury. The daughter, a
big, heavy young woman of seven-and-twenty, was supposed to be a good
performer on the piano, and her mother praised her in season and out
of season in the clumsiest way. No eligible man had any taste which
Camille did not share on her mother's authoritative statement. Mme. du
Brossard, in her anxiety to establish her child, was capable of saying
that her dear Camille liked nothing so much as a roving life from one
garrison to another; and before the evening was out, that she was sure
her dear Camille liked a quiet country farmhouse existence of all
things. Mother and daughter had the pinched sub-acid dignity
characteristic of those who have learned by