“Well, then, wait!” cried Mademoiselle Habert, Jesuitically, aware that time would rid her of the colonel.

Sylvie’s new devotion to the church warned her that the morality of such a marriage might be doubtful.  She accordingly sounded her conscience in the confessional.  The stern priest explained the opinions of the Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all passions but those with a social purpose.  Sylvie’s perplexities were great.  These internal struggles gave extraordinary force to her passion, investing it with that inexplicable attraction which, from the days of Eve, the thing forbidden possesses for women.  Mademoiselle Rogron’s perturbation did not escape the lynx-eyed lawyer.

One evening, after the game had ended, Vinet approached his dear friend Sylvie, took her hand, and led her to a sofa.

“Something troubles you,” he said.

She nodded sadly.  The lawyer let the others depart; Rogron walked home with the Chargeboeufs, and when Vinet was alone with the old maid he wormed the truth out of her.

“Cleverly played, abbe!” thought he.  “But you’ve played into my hands.”

The foxy lawyer was more decided in his opinion than even the doctor.  He advised marriage in ten years.  Inwardly he was vowing that the whole Rogron fortune should go to Bathilde.  He rubbed his hands, his pinched lips closed more tightly as he hurried home.  The influence exercised by Monsieur Habert, physician of the soul, and by Vinet, doctor of the purse, balanced each other perfectly.  Rogron had no piety in him; so the churchman and the man of law, the black-robed pair, were fairly matched.

On discovering the victory obtained by Celeste, in her anxiety to marry Rogron herself, over Sylvie, torn between the fear of death and the joy of being baronness and mayoress, the lawyer saw his chance of driving the colonel from the battlefield.  He knew Rogron well enough to be certain he could marry him to Bathilde; Jerome had already succumbed inwardly to her charms, and Vinet knew that the first time the pair were alone together the marriage would be settled.  Rogron had reached the point of keeping his eyes fixed on Celeste, so much did he fear to look at Bathilde.  Vinet had now possessed himself of Sylvie’s secrets, and saw the force with which she loved the colonel.  He fully understood the struggle of such a passion in the heart of an old maid who was also in the grasp of religious emotion, and he saw his way to rid himself of Pierrette and the colonel both by making each the cause of the other’s overthrow.

The next day, after the court had risen, Vinet met the colonel and Rogron talking a walk together, according to their daily custom.