lynxes of the bank.  There is no reason why Tiphaine should not be judge, through his wife, of a Royal court.  Marry Rogron; we’ll have him elected deputy from Provins as soon as I gain another precinct in the Seine-et-Marne.  You can then get him a place as receiver-general, where he’ll have nothing to do but sign his name.  We shall belong to the opposition if the Liberals triumph, but if the Bourbons remain —­ah! then we shall lean gently, gently towards the centre.  Besides, you must remember Rogron can’t live forever, and then you can marry a titled man.  In short, put yourself in a good position, and the Chargeboeufs will be ready enough to serve us.  Your poverty has no doubt taught you, as mine did me, to know what men are worth.  We must make use of them as we do of post-horses.  A man, or a woman, will take us along to such or such a distance.”

Vinet ended by making Bathilde a small edition of Catherine de Medicis.  He left his wife at home, rejoiced to be alone with her two children, while he went every night to the Rogrons’ with Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.  He arrived there in all the glory of better circumstances.  His spectacles were of gold, his waistcoat silk; a white cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made in Paris, and a gold watch and chain, made up his apparel.  In place of the former Vinet, pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present Vinet bore himself with the air and manner of a man of importance; he marched boldly forward, certain of success, with that peculiar show of security which belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the law.  His sly little head was well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which gave him a mincing though frigid look, that made him seem agreeable in the style of Robespierre.  Certainly he would make a fine attorney-general, endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of Benjamin Constant.  The bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him had now turned into soft-spoken perfidy; the poison was transformed into anodyne.

“Good-evening, my dear; how are you?” said Madame de Chargeboeuf, greeting Sylvie.

Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her bonnet, looked at herself in the glass, and placed her pretty foot on the fender that Rogron might admire it.

“What is the matter with you?” she said to him, looking directly in his face.  “You have not bowed to me.  Pray why should we put on our best velvet gowns to please you?”

She pushed past Pierrette to lay down her hat, which the latter took from her hand, and which she let her take exactly as though she were a servant.  Men are supposed to be ferocious, and tigers too; but neither tigers, vipers, diplomatists, lawyers, executioners or kings ever approach, in their greatest atrocities, the gentle cruelty, the poisoned sweetness, the savage disdain of one young woman for another, when she thinks