“Quite so,” replied Lousteau.  “Madame de la Baudraye was greatly annoyed by your choosing to follow her without being invited.  Believe me, to bore a woman is a bad way of courting her.  Dinah has played you a trick, and you have given her a laugh; it is more than any of you has done in these thirteen years past.  You owe that success to Bianchon, for your cousin was the author of the Farce of the ’Manuscript.’—­Will the horse get over it?” asked Lousteau with a laugh, while Gatien was wondering whether to be angry or not.

“The horse!” said Gatien.

At this moment Madame de la Baudraye came in, dressed in a velvet gown, and accompanied by her mother, who shot angry flashes at Lousteau.  It would have been too rash for Dinah to seem cold or severe to Lousteau in Gatien’s presence; and Etienne, taking advantage of this, offered his arm to the supposed Lucretia; however, she declined it.

“Do you mean to cast off a man who has vowed to live for you?” said he, walking close beside her.  “I shall stop at Sancerre and go home to-morrow.”

“Are you coming, mamma?” said Madame de la Baudraye to Madame Piedefer, thus avoiding a reply to the direct challenge by which Lousteau was forcing her to a decision.

Lousteau handed the mother into the chaise, he helped Madame de la Baudraye by gently taking her arm, and he and Gatien took the front seat, leaving the saddle horse at La Baudraye.

“You have changed your gown,” said Gatien, blunderingly, to Dinah.

“Madame la Baronne was chilled by the cool air off the river,” replied Lousteau.  “Bianchon advised her to put on a warm dress.”

Dinah turned as red as a poppy, and Madame Piedefer assumed a stern expression.

“Poor Bianchon! he is on the road to Paris.  A noble soul!” said Lousteau.

“Oh, yes!” cried Madame de la Baudraye, “he is high-minded, full of delicate feeling——­”

“We were in such good spirits when we set out,” said Lousteau; “now you are overdone, and you speak to me so bitterly—­why?  Are you not accustomed to being told how handsome and how clever you are?  For my part, I say boldly, before Gatien, I give up Paris; I mean to stay at Sancerre and swell the number of your cavalieri serventi.  I feel so young again in my native district; I have quite forgotten Paris and all its wickedness, and its bores, and its wearisome pleasures.—­Yes, my life seems in a way purified.”

Dinah allowed Lousteau to talk without even looking at him; but at last there was a moment when this serpent’s rhodomontade was really so inspired by the effort he made to affect passion in phrases and ideas of which the meaning, though hidden from Gatien, found a loud response in Dinah’s heart, that she raised her eyes to his.  This look seemed to crown Lousteau’s joy; his wit flowed more freely, and at last he made Madame de la Baudraye laugh.  When, under circumstances which so seriously compromise her pride, a woman has been made to laugh, she is finally committed.