The two clever foxes of the Opposition made the mistake of pulling the first trigger.  Vinet, under the spur of self-interest, bethought himself of his wife’s only friends, and looked up Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf and her mother.  The two women were living in poverty at Troyes on two thousand francs a year.  Mademoiselle Bathilde de Chargeboeuf was one of those fine creatures who believe in marriage for love up to their twenty-fifth year, and change their opinion when they find themselves still unmarried.  Vinet managed to persuade Madame de Chargeboeuf to join her means to his and live with his family in Provins, where Bathilde, he assured her, could marry a fool named Rogron, and, clever as she was, take her place in the best society of the place.

The arrival of Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf in the lawyer’s household was a great reinforcement for the liberal party; and it created consternation among the aristocrats of Provins and also in the Tiphaine clique.  Madame de Breautey, horrified to see two women of rank so misled, begged them to come to her.  She was shocked that the royalists of Troyes had so neglected the mother and daughter, whose situation she now learned for the first time.

“How is it that no old country gentleman has married that dear girl, who is cut out for a lady of the manor?” she said.  “They have let her run to seed, and now she is to be flung at the head of a Rogron!”

She ransacked the whole department but did not succeed in finding any gentleman willing to marry a girl whose mother had only two thousand francs a year.  The “clique” and the subprefect also looked about them with the same object, but they were all too late.  Madame de Breautey made terrible charges against the selfishness which degraded France, —­the consequence, she said, of materialism, and of the importance now given by the laws to money:  nobility was no longer of value! nor beauty either!  Such creatures as the Rogrons, the Vinets, could stand up and fight with the King of France!

Bathilde de Chargeboeuf had not only the incontestable superiority of beauty over her rival, but that of dress as well.  She was dazzlingly fair.  At twenty-five her shoulders were fully developed, and the curves of her beautiful figure were exquisite.  The roundness of her throat, the purity of its lines, the wealth of her golden hair, the charming grace of her smile, the distinguished carriage of her head, the character of her features, the fine eyes finely placed beneath a well-formed brow, her every motion, noble and high-bred, and her light and graceful figure,—­all were in harmony.  Her hands were beautiful, and her feet slender.  Health gave her, perhaps, too much the look of a handsome barmaid.  “But that can’t be a defect in the eyes of a Rogron,” sighed Madame Tiphaine.  Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf’s dress when she made her first appearance in Provins at the Rogrons’ house was very simple.  Her brown merino gown edged with green embroidery was