The Abbe de Sponde looked graciously at the Chevalier de Valois, and nodded his head in sign of his laudatory approbation.

“Doesn’t mademoiselle know history?” asked the recorder of mortgages.

“If you mix up Louis XV. and this girl Suzanne, how am I to know history?” replied Mademoiselle Cormon, angelically, glad to see that the dish of ducks was empty at last, and the conversation so ready to revive that all present laughed with their mouths full at her last remark.

“Poor girl!” said the Abbe de Sponde.  “When a great misfortune happens, charity, which is divine love, and as blind as pagan love, ought not to look into the causes of it.  Niece, you are president of the Maternity Society; you must succor that poor girl, who will now find it difficult to marry.”

“Poor child!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Cormon.

“Do you suppose du Bousquier would marry her?” asked the judge.

“If he is an honorable man he ought to do so,” said Madame Granson; “but really, to tell the truth, my dog has better morals than he—­”

“Azor is, however, a good purveyor,” said the recorder of mortgages, with the air of saying a witty thing.

At dessert du Bousquier was still the topic of conversation, having given rise to various little jokes which the wine rendered sparkling.  Following the example of the recorder, each guest capped his neighbor’s joke with another:  Du Bousquier was a father, but not a confessor; he was father less; he was father LY; he was not a reverend father; nor yet a conscript-father—­

“Nor can he be a foster-father,” said the Abbe de Sponde, with a gravity which stopped the laughter.

“Nor a noble father,” added the chevalier.

The Church and the nobility descended thus into the arena of puns, without, however, losing their dignity.

“Hush!” exclaimed the recorder of mortgages.  “I hear the creaking of du Bousquier’s boots.”

It usually happens that a man is ignorant of rumors that are afloat about him.  A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing about it.  Now the innocent du Bousquier was superb in his ignorance.  No one had told him as yet of Suzanne’s revelations; he therefore appeared very jaunty and slightly conceited when the company, leaving the dining-room, returned to the salon for their coffee; several other guests had meantime assembled for the evening.  Mademoiselle Cormon, from a sense of shamefacedness, dared not look at the terrible seducer.  She seized upon Athanase, and began to lecture him with the queerest platitudes about royalist politics and religious morality.  Not possessing, like the Chevalier de Valois, a snuff-box adorned with a princess, by the help of which he could stand this torrent of silliness, the poor poet listened to the words of her whom he loved with a stupid air, gazing, meanwhile, at her enormous bust, which held itself before him in that still repose which is the attribute of all great masses.  His love produced in him a sort of intoxication which changed the shrill voice of the old maid into a soft murmur, and her flat remarks into witty speeches.  Love is a maker of false coin, continually changing copper pennies into gold-pieces, and sometimes turning its real gold into copper.