“Indeed!” said Gravier, changing countenance.  “And Monsieur de la Baudraye is gone to La Charite!”

“But why do you meddle in such matters?” said Bianchon to Gatien.

“Horace is right,” said Lousteau.  “I cannot imagine why you trouble your heads so much about each other; you waste your time in frivolities.”

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the “funny column” were incomprehensible at Sancerre.

On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien, under the guidance of a keeper, to make their way through a little ravine.

“Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier,” said Bianchon, when they had reached a clearing.

“You may be a great physician,” said Gatien, “but you are ignorant of provincial life.  You mean to wait for Monsieur Gravier?—­By this time he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is within twenty minutes of Anzy by now——­” Gatien looked at his watch.  “Good! he will be just in time.”

“Where?”

“At the chateau for breakfast,” replied Gatien.  “Do you suppose I could rest easy if Madame de la Baudraye were alone with Monsieur de Clagny?  There are two of them now; they will keep an eye on each other.  Dinah will be well guarded.”

“Ah, ha!  Then Madame de la Baudraye has not yet made up her mind?” said Lousteau.

“So mamma thinks.  For my part, I am afraid that Monsieur de Clagny has at last succeeded in bewitching Madame de la Baudraye.  If he has been able to show her that he had any chance of putting on the robes of the Keeper of the Seals, he may have hidden his moleskin complexion, his terrible eyes, his touzled mane, his voice like a hoarse crier’s, his bony figure, like that of a starveling poet, and have assumed all the charms of Adonis.  If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as Attorney-General, she may see him as a handsome youth.  Eloquence has great privileges.—­Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition.  She does not like Sancerre, and dreams of the glories of Paris.”

“But what interest have you in all this?” said Lousteau.  “If she is in love with the Public Prosecutor!—­Ah! you think she will not love him for long, and you hope to succeed him.”

“You who live in Paris,” said Gatien, “meet as many different women as there are days in the year.  But at Sancerre, where there are not half a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her secrets, since she must then treat him with some consideration.”

“Consideration!  So that is what you call it in these parts?” said the journalist with a smile.

“I should suppose Madame de la Baudraye to have too much good taste to trouble her head about that ugly ape,” said Bianchon.