Monsieur de Clagny and Monsieur Gravier looked at each other, feeling rather silly as they beheld the two Parisians in the carriage, while they, like two simpletons, were left standing at the foot of the steps.  Monsieur de la Baudraye, who stood at the top waving his little hand in a little farewell to the doctor, could not forbear from smiling as he heard Monsieur de Clagny say to Monsieur Gravier: 

“You should have escorted them on horseback.”

At this juncture, Gatien, riding Monsieur de la Baudraye’s quiet little mare, came out of the side road from the stables and joined the party in the chaise.

“Ah, good,” said the Receiver-General, “the boy has mounted guard.”

“What a bore!” cried Dinah as she saw Gatien.  “In thirteen years—­for I have been married nearly thirteen years—­I have never had three hours’ liberty.

“Married, madame?” said the journalist with a smile.  “You remind me of a saying of Michaud’s—­he was so witty!  He was setting out for the Holy Land, and his friends were remonstrating with him, urging his age, and the perils of such an expedition.  ‘And then,’ said one, ’you are married.’—­’Married!’ said he, ‘so little married.’”

Even the rigid Madame Piedefer could not repress a smile.

“I should not be surprised to see Monsieur de Clagny mounted on my pony to complete the escort,” said Dinah.

“Well, if the Public Prosecutor does not pursue us, you can get rid of this little fellow at Sancerre.  Bianchon must, of course, have left something behind on his table—­the notes for the first lecture of his course—­and you can ask Gatien to go back to Anzy to fetch it.”

This simple little plot put Madame de la Baudraye into high spirits.  From the road between Anzy to Sancerre, a glorious landscape frequently comes into view, of the noble stretches of the Loire, looking like a lake, and it was got over very pleasantly, for Dinah was happy in finding herself well understood.  Love was discussed in theory, a subject allowing lovers in petto to take the measure, as it were, of each other’s heart.  The journalist took a tone of refined corruption to prove that love obeys no law, that the character of the lovers gives infinite variety to its incidents, that the circumstances of social life add to the multiplicity of its manifestations, that in love all is possible and true, and that any given woman, after resisting every temptation and the seductions of the most passionate lover, may be carried off her feet in the course of a few hours by a fancy, an internal whirlwind of which God alone would ever know the secret!

“Why,” said he, “is not that the key to all the adventures we have talked over these three days past?”

For these three days, indeed, Dinah’s lively imagination had been full of the most insidious romances, and the conversation of the two Parisians had affected the woman as the most mischievous reading might have done.  Lousteau watched the effects of this clever manoeuvre, to seize the moment when his prey, whose readiness to be caught was hidden under the abstraction caused by irresolution, should be quite dizzy.