Every one flocked to Amelie's house that evening, for
by that time the most exaggerated versions of the story were in
circulation among the Angouleme nobility, every narrator having
followed Stanislas' example. Women and men were alike impatient to
know the truth; and the women who put their hands before their faces
and shrieked the loudest were none other than Mesdames Amelie,
Zephirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, all with more or less heavy
indictments of illicit love laid to their charge. There were
variations in every key upon the painful theme.

"Well, well," said one of the ladies, "poor Nais! have you heard about
it? I do not believe it myself; she has a whole blameless record
behind her; she is far too proud to be anything but a patroness to M.
Chardon. Still, if it is true, I pity her with all my heart."

"She is all the more to be pitied because she is making herself
frightfully ridiculous; she is old enough to be M. Lulu's mother, as
Jacques called him. The little poet it twenty-two at most; and Nais,
between ourselves, is quite forty."

"For my own part," said M. du Chatelet, "I think that M. de Rubempre's
position in itself proves Nais' innocence. A man does not go down on
his knees to ask for what he has had already."

"That is as may be!" said Francis, with levity that brought
Zephirine's disapproving glance down on him.

"Do just tell us how it really was," they besought Stanislas, and
formed a small, secret committee in a corner of the salon.

Stanislas, in the long length, had put together a little story full of
facetious suggestions, and accompanied it with pantomime, which made
the thing prodigiously worse.

"It is incredible!"

"At midday?"

"Nais was the last person whom I should have suspected!"

"What will she do now?"

Then followed more comments, and suppositions without end. Chatelet
took Mme. de Bargeton's part; but he defended her so ill, that he
stirred the fire of gossip instead of putting it out.

Lili, disconsolate over the fall of the fairest angel in the
Angoumoisin hierarchy, went, dissolved in tears, to carry the news to
the palace. When the delighted Chatelet was convinced that the whole
town was agog, he went off to Mme. de Bargeton's, where, alas! there
was but one game of whist that night, and diplomatically asked Nais
for a little talk in the boudoir. They sat down on the sofa, and
Chatelet began in an undertone--

"You know what Angouleme is talking about, of course