“It’s just the other way here,” replied Jeanette.  “Madame sits up with the company playing cards; sometimes there are sixteen of them in the salon; Monsieur goes to bed at eight o’clock, and we get up at daylight—­”

“You think that’s different,” said Rigou, “but it comes to the same thing in the end.  Well, my dear, you come to me and I’ll send Annette here, and that will be the same thing and different too.”

“Old scamp, you’ll make her ashamed,” said Soudry.

“Ha! gendarme; you want your field to yourself!  Well, we all get our happiness where we can find it.”

Jeanette, by her master’s order, disappeared to lay out his clothes.

“You must have promised to marry her when your wife dies,” said Rigou.

“At your age and mine,” replied Soudry, “there’s no other way.”

“With girls of any ambition it would be one way to become a widower,” added Rigou; “especially if Madame Soudry found fault with Jeannette for her way of scrubbing the staircase.”

The remark made the two husbands pensive.  When Jeannette returned and announced that all was ready, Soudry said to her, “Come and help me!” —­a precaution which made the ex-monk smile.

“There’s a difference, indeed!” said he.  “As for me, I’d leave you alone with Annette, my good friend.”

A quarter of an hour later Soudry, in his best clothes, got into the wicker carriage, and the two friends drove round the lake of Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes.

“Look at it!” said Rigou, as they reached an eminence from which the chateau of Soulanges could be seen in profile.

The old revolutionary put into the tone of his words all the hatred which the rural middle classes feel to the great chateaux and the great estates.

“Yes, but I hope it will never be destroyed as long as I live,” said Soudry.  “The Comte de Soulanges was my general; he did me kindness; he got my pension, and he allows Lupin to manage the estate.  After Lupin some of us will have it, and as long as the Soulanges family exists they and their property will be respected.  Such folks are large-minded; they let every one make his profit, and they find it pays.”

“Yes, but the Comte de Soulanges has three children, who, at his death, may not agree,” replied Rigou.  “The husband of his daughter and his sons may go to law, and end by selling the lead and iron mines to manufacturers, from whom we shall manage to get them back.”

The chateau just then showed up in profile, as if to defy the ex-monk.

“Ah! look at it; in those days they built well,” cried Soudry.  “But just now Monsieur le Comte is economizing, so as to make Soulanges the entailed estate of his peerage.”

“My dear friend,” said Rigou, “entailed estates won’t exist much longer.”

When the topic of public matters was exhausted, the worthy pair began to discuss the merits of their pretty maids in terms too Burgundian to be printed here.  That inexhaustible subject carried them so far that before they knew it they saw the capital of the arrondissement over which Gaubertin reigned, and which we hope excites enough curiosity in the reader’s mind to justify a short digression.