exactly where she placed it; and the abbe annoyed her terribly by
moving it, which he did nearly every evening. How is this

sensitiveness stupidly spent on nothings to be accounted for? what is
the object of it? No one could have told in this case; Mademoiselle

Gamard herself knew no reason for it. The vicar, though a sheep by
nature, did not like, any more than other sheep, to feel the crook too

often, especially when it bristled with spikes. Not seeking to explain
to himself the patience of the Abbe Troubert, Birotteau simply

withdrew from the happiness which Mademoiselle Gamard believed that
she seasoned to his liking,--for she regarded happiness as a thing to

be made, like her preserves. But the luckless abbe made the break in a
clumsy way, the natural way of his own naive character, and it was not

carried out without much nagging and sharp-shooting, which the Abbe
Birotteau endeavored to bear as if he did not feel them.

By the end of the first year of his sojourn under Mademoiselle
Gamard's roof the vicar had resumed his former habits; spending two

evenings a week with Madame de Listomere, three with Mademoiselle
Salomon, and the other two with Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere.

These ladies belonged to the aristocratic circles of Tourainean
society, to which Mademoiselle Gamard was not admitted. Therefore the

abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel
her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing

rejected.
"Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe

Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell
them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world,

and a good liver! He wants fashion, luxury, witty conversation, and
the scandals of the town."

These words of course obliged Mademoiselle Gamard to defend herself at
Birotteau's expense.

"He is not much a man of the world," she said. "If it had not been for
the Abbe Chapeloud he would never have been received at Madame de

Listomere's. Oh, what didn't I lose in losing the Abbe Chapeloud! Such
an amiable man, and so easy to live with! In twelve whole years I

never had the slightest difficulty or disagreement with him."
Presented thus, the innocent abbe was considered by this bourgeois

society, which secretly hated the aristocratic society, as a man
essentially exacting and hard to get along with. For a week

Mademoiselle Gamard enjoyed the pleasure of being pitied by friends
who, without really thinking one word of what they said, kept

repeating to her: "How COULD he have turned against you?--so kind and
gentle as you are!" or, "Console yourself, dear Mademoiselle Gamard,

you are so well known that--" et cetera.
Nevertheless, these friends, enchanted to escape one evening a week in

the Cloister, the darkest, dreariest, and most out of the way corner
in Tours, blessed the poor vicar in their hearts.

Between persons who are perpetually in each other's company dislike or
love increases daily; every moment brings reasons to love or hate each

other more and more. The Abbe Birotteau soon became intolerable to
Mademoiselle Gamard. Eighteen months after she had taken him to board,

and at the moment when the worthy man was mistaking the silence of
hatred for the peacefulness of content, and applauding himself for

having, as he said, "managed matters so well with the old maid," he
was really the object of an underhand persecution and a vengeance

deliberately planned. The four marked circumstances of the locked
door, the forgotten slippers, the lack of fire, and the removal of the

candlestick, were the first signs that revealed to him a terrible
enmity, the final consequences of which were destined not to strike

him until the time came when they were irreparable.
As he went to bed the worthy vicar worked his brains--quite uselessly,

for he was soon at the end of them--to explain to himself the
extraordinarily discourteous conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard. The fact

was that, having all along acted logically in obeying the natural laws
of his own egotism, it was impossible that he should now perceive his

own faults towards his landlady.
Though the great things of life are simple to understand and easy to

express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain
them. The foregoing events, which may be called a sort of prologue to

this bourgeois drama, in which we shall find passions as violent as
those excited by great interests, required this long introduction; and

it would have been difficult for any faithfulhistorian to shorten the
account of these minute developments.

II
The next morning, on awaking, Birotteau thought so much of his

prospective canonry that he forgot the four circumstances in which he
had seen, the night before, such threatening prognostics of a future

full of misery. The vicar was not a man to get up without a fire. He
rang to let Marianne know that he was awake and that she must come to

him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent
musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him

from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,--a sort of
music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne had not

appeared. The vicar, now half a canon, was about to ring again, when
he let go the bell-pull, hearing a man's step on the staircase. In a

minute more the Abbe Troubert, after discreetly knocking at the door,
obeyed Birotteau's invitation and entered the room. This visit, which

the two abbe's usually paid each other once a month, was no surprise
to the vicar. The canon at once exclaimed when he saw that Marianne

had not made the fire of his quasi-colleague. He opened the window and
called to her harshly, telling her to come at once to the abbe; then,

turning round to his ecclesiastical brother, he said, "If Mademoiselle
knew that you had no fire she would scold Marianne."

After this speech he inquired about Birotteau's health, and asked in a
gentle voice if he had had any recent news that gave him hopes of his

canonry. The vicar explained the steps he had taken, and told,
naively, the names of the persons with whom Madam de Listomere was

using her influence, quite unaware that Troubert had never forgiven
that lady for not admitting him--the Abbe Troubert, twice proposed by

the bishop as vicar-general!--to her house.
It would be impossible to find two figures which presented so many

contrasts to each other as those of the two abbes. Troubert, tall and
lean, was yellow and bilious, while the vicar was what we call,

familiarly, plump. Birotteau's face, round and ruddy, proclaimed a
kindly nature barren of ideas, while that of the Abbe Troubert, long

and ploughed by many wrinkles, took on at times an expression of
sarcasm, or else of contempt; but it was necessary to watch him very

closely before those sentiments could be detected. The canon's
habitual condition was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually

lowered over his orange-colored eyes, which could, however, give clear
and piercing glances when he liked. Reddish hair added to the gloomy

effect of this countenance, which was always obscured by the veil
which deep meditation drew across its features. Many persons at first

sight thought him absorbed in high and earnest ambitions; but those
who claimed to know him better denied that impression, insisting that

he was only stupidly dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or
else worn out by too much fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed.

When it did so happen that he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile
would flicker on his lips and lose itself in the wrinkles of his face.

Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansion, all frankness; he
loved good things and was amused by trifles with the simplicity of a

man who knew no spite or malice. The Abbe Troubert roused, at first
sight, an involuntary feeling of fear, while the vicar's presence

brought a kindly smile to the lips of all who looked at him. When the
tall canon marched with solemn step through the naves and cloisters of

Saint-Gatien, his head bowed, his eye stern, respect followed him;
that bent face was in harmony with the yellowing arches of the

cathedral; the folds of his cassock fell in monumental lines that were
worthy of statuary. The good vicar, on the contrary, perambulated

about with no gravity at all. He trotted and ambled and seemed at
times to roll himself along. But with all this there was one point of

resemblance between the two men. For, precisely as Troubert's
ambitious air, which made him feared, had contributed probably to keep

him down to the insignificant position of a mere canon, so the
character and ways of Birotteau marked him out as perpetually the