, hold
receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who
appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention
than they did on his brilliant partner.

He had devoted himself to agriculture--to agriculture in the Chamber.
There are in the same way generals in the Chamber--those who are born,
who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office,
are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chambers--viz., in
the Admiralty--Colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied
agriculture, indeed he had studied it deeply, in its relations with
the other sciences, with political economy, with the Fine Arts--we
dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of science, since we even call
the horrible railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the
point when it was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted
in the Technical Reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him
appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.

This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.

Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations
to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they
associated together, or rather they did not--they formed two groups.
Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and Ministers,
occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of
the Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a
smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically
described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.

The two camps were clearly separated. Monsieur, without jealousy,
moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial
handshakings were exchanged, but the Academy entertained infinite
contempt for the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of
the princes of science, of thought, or of anything else mingled with
the agriculturists.

These receptions occasioned little expense--a cup of tea, a cake, that
was all. Monsieur, at an earlier period, had claimed two cakes, one
for the academy, and one for the agriculturists, but Madame having
rightly suggested that this way of acting seemed to indicate two
camps, two receptions, two parties, Monsieur did not press the matter,
so that they used only one cake, of which Madame Anserre did the
honors at the Academy, and which then passed into the Salon de
Agriculture.

Now, this cake was soon