Whenever the three men were seen in company the whole town talked of it.  This triumvirate, held in horror by the sub-prefect, the magistracy, and the Tiphaine clique, was, on the other hand, a source of pride and vanity to the Liberals of Provins.  Vinet was sole editor of the “Courrier” and the head of the party; the colonel, the working manager, was its arm; Rogron, by means of his purse, its nerves.  The Tiphaines declared that the three men were always plotting evil to the government; the Liberals admired them as the defenders of the people.  When Rogron turned to go home, recalled by a sense of his dinner-hour, Vinet stopped the colonel from following him by taking Gouraud’s arm.

“Well, colonel,” he said, “I am going to take a fearful load off your shoulders; you can do better than marry Sylvie; if you play your cards properly you can marry that little Pierrette in two years’ time.”

He thereupon related the Jesuit’s manoeuvre and its effect on Sylvie.

“What a skulking trick!” cried the colonel; “and spreading over years, too!”

“Colonel,” said Vinet, gravely, “Pierrette is a charming creature; with her you can be happy for the rest of your life; your health is so sound that the difference in your ages won’t seem disproportionate.  But, all the same, you mustn’t think it an easy thing to change a dreadful fate to a pleasant one.  To turn a woman who loves you into a friend and confidant is as perilous a business as crossing a river under fire of the enemy.  Cavalry colonel as you are, and daring too, you must study the position and manoeuvre your forces with the same wisdom you have displayed hitherto, and which has won us our present position.  If I get to be attorney-general you shall command the department.  Oh! if you had been an elector we should be further advanced than we are now; I should have bought the votes of those two clerks by threatening them with the loss of their places, and we should have had a majority.”

The colonel had long been thinking about Pierrette, but he concealed his thoughts with the utmost dissimulation.  His roughness to the child was only a mask; but she could not understand why the man who claimed to be her father’s old comrade should usually treat her so ill, when sometimes, if he met her alone, he would chuck her under the chin and give her a friendly kiss.  But after the conversation with Vinet relating to Sylvie’s fears of marriage Gouraud began to seek opportunities to find Pierrette alone; the rough colonel made himself as soft as a cat; he told her how brave her father was and what a misfortune it had been for her that she lost him.