“Can my false front be crooked?” he asked himself, seized by one of those anxieties which beset old bachelors.

He took advantage of a lost trick, which ended a seventh rubber, to rise and leave the table.

“I can’t touch a card without losing,” he said.  “I am decidedly too unlucky.”

“But you are lucky in other ways,” said the chevalier, giving him a sly look.

That speech naturally made the rounds of the salon, where every one exclaimed on the exquisite taste of the chevalier, the Prince de Talleyrand of the province.

“There’s no one like Monsieur de Valois for such wit.”

Du Bousquier went to look at himself in a little oblong mirror, placed above the “Deserter,” but he saw nothing strange in his appearance.

After innumerable repetitions of the same text, varied in all keys, the departure of the company took place about ten o’clock, through the long antechamber, Mademoiselle Cormon conducting certain of her favorite guests to the portico.  There the groups parted; some followed the Bretagne road towards the chateau; the others went in the direction of the river Sarthe.  Then began the usual conversation, which for twenty years had echoed at that hour through this particular street of Alencon.  It was invariably:—­

“Mademoiselle Cormon looked very well to-night.”

“Mademoiselle Cormon? why, I thought her rather strange.”

“How that poor abbe fails!  Did you notice that he slept?  He does not know what cards he holds; he is getting very absent-minded.”

“We shall soon have the grief of losing him.”

“What a fine night!  It will be a fine day to-morrow.”

“Good weather for the apple-blossoms.”

“You beat us; but when you play with Monsieur de Valois you never do otherwise.”

“How much did he win?”

“Well, to-night, three or four francs; he never loses.”

“True; and don’t you know there are three hundred and sixty-five days a year?  At that price his gains are the value of a farm.”

“Ah! what hands we had to-night!”

“Here you are at home, monsieur and madame, how lucky you are, while we have half the town to cross!”

“I don’t pity you; you could afford a carriage, and dispense with the fatigue of going on foot.”

“Ah, monsieur! we have a daughter to marry, which takes off one wheel, and the support of our son in Paris carries off another.”

“You persist in making a magistrate of him?”

“What else can be done with a young man?  Besides, there’s no shame in serving the king.”

Sometimes a discussion on ciders and flax, always couched in the same terms, and returning at the same time of year, was continued on the homeward way.  If any observer of human customs had lived in this street, he would have known the months and seasons by simply overhearing the conversations.