ngelistas. Natalie and her mother
were somewhat surprised to see the lengthened face of the marquise, and
they asked at once if anything distressing had happened to her.

"Can it be," she replied, "that you are ignorant of the rumors that are
circulating? Though I think them false myself, I have come to learn the
truth in order to stop this gossip, at any rate among the circle of my
own friends. To be the dupes or the accomplices of such an error is too
false a position for true friends to occupy."

"But what is it? what has happened?" asked mother and daughter.

Madame de Gyas thereupon allowed herself the happiness of repeating all
the current gossip, not sparing her two friends a single stab. Natalie
and Madame Evangelista looked at each other and laughed, but they fully
understood the meaning of the tale and the motives of their friend.
The Spanish lady took her revenge very much as Celimene took hers on
Arsinoe.

"My dear, are you ignorant--you who know the provinces so well--can
you be ignorant of what a mother is capable when she has on her hands
a daughter whom she cannot marry for want of 'dot' and lovers, want of
beauty, want of mind, and, sometimes, want of everything? Why, a mother
in that position would rob a diligence or commit a murder, or wait for a
man at the corner of a street--she would sacrifice herself twenty times
over, if she was a mother at all. Now, as you and I both know, there are
many such in that situation in Bordeaux, and no doubt they attribute to
us their own thoughts and actions. Naturalists have depicted the habits
and customs of many ferocious animals, but they have forgotten the
mother and daughter in quest of a husband. Such women are hyenas, going
about, as the Psalmist says, seeking whom they may devour, and adding to
the instinct of the brute the intellect of man, and the genius of woman.
I can understand that those little spiders, Mademoiselle de Belor,
Mademoiselle de Trans, and others, after working so long at their webs
without catching a fly, without so much as hearing a buzz, should be
furious; I can even forgive their spiteful speeches. But that you, who
can marry your daughter when you please, you, who are rich and titled,
you who have nothing of the provincial about you, whose daughter is
clever and possesses fine qualities, with beauty and the power to
choose--that you, so distinguished from the rest by your Parisian grace,
should have paid the least heed to this talk