One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one of the vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room, floored with large white tiles.  The family portraits which adorned the walls looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen persons gathered about them, chattering over their whist.  Gaston, thinking of nothing, digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the provincial looks forward all through the day, found himself justifying the customs of the country.

He began to understand why these good folk continued to play with yesterday’s pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth, and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others.  He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even tenor of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical monotony, in their ignorance of the refinements of luxury.  Indeed, he almost came to think that luxury profited nothing; and even now, the city of Paris, with its passions, storms, and pleasures, was scarcely more than a memory of childhood.

He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful manner of some young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton, unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous.  His doom was sealed.  He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached his ear—­a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion as he might have felt when a strain of really good music mingles with the accompaniment of some tedious opera.

“You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did you not?” The speaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the local royal family.

“I went this morning.  She was so poorly and depressed, that I could not persuade her to dine with us to-morrow.”

“With Mme. de Champignelles?” exclaimed the dowager with something like astonishment in her manner.

“With my wife,” calmly assented the noble.  “Mme. de Beauseant is descended from the House of Burgundy, on the spindle side, ’tis true, but the name atones for everything.  My wife is very much attached to the Vicomtesse, and the poor lady has lived alone for such a long while, that——­”

The Marquis de Champignelles looked round about him while he spoke with an air of cool unconcern, so that it was almost impossible to guess whether he made a concession to Mme. de Beauseant’s misfortunes, or paid homage to her noble birth; whether he felt flattered to receive her in his house, or, on the contrary, sheer pride was the motive that led him to try to force the country families to meet the Vicomtesse.

The women appeared to take counsel of each other by a glance; there was a sudden silence in the room, and it was felt that their attitude was one of disapproval.