For want of exercising in nature's own way the activity bestowed upon
women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle

Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues,
provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner

or later, the lives of all old maids. Birotteau, unhappily, had
developed in Sophie Gamard the only sentiments which it was possible

for that poor creature to feel,--those of hatred; a passion hitherto
latent under the calmness and monotony of provincial life, but which

was now to become the more intense because it was spent on petty
things and in the midst of a narrow sphere. Birotteau was one of those

beings who are predestined to suffer because, being unable to see
things, they cannot avoid them; to them the worst happens.

"Yes, it will be a fine day," replied the canon, after a pause,
apparently issuing from a revery and wishing to conform to the rules

of politeness.
Birotteau, frightened at the length of time which had elapsed between

the question and the answer,--for he had, for the first time in his
life, taken his coffee without uttering a word,--now left the dining-

room where his heart was squeezed as if in a vise. Feeling that the
coffee lay heavy on his stomach, he went to walk in a sad mood among

the narrow, box-edged garden paths which outlined a star in the little
garden. As he turned after making the first round, he saw Mademoiselle

Gamard and the Abbe Troubert standing stock-still and silent on the
threshold of the door,--he with his arms folded and motionless like a

statue on a tomb; she leaning against the blind door. Both seemed to
be gazing at him and counting his steps. Nothing is so embarrassing to

a creature naturally timid as to feel itself the object of a close
examination, and if that is made by the eyes of hatred, the sort of

suffering it causes is changed into intolerable martyrdom.
Presently Birotteau fancied he was preventing Mademoiselle Gamard and

the abbe from walking in the narrow path. That idea, inspired equally
by fear and kindness, became so strong that he left the garden and

went to the church, thinking no longer of his canonry, so absorbed was
he by the disheartening tyranny of the old maid. Luckily for him he

happened to find much to do at Saint-Gatien,--several funerals, a
marriage, and two baptisms. Thus employed he forgot his griefs. When

his stomach told him that dinner was ready he drew out his watch and
saw, not without alarm, that it was some minutes after four. Being

well aware of Mademoiselle Gamard's punctuality, he hurried back to
the house.

He saw at once on passing the kitchen door that the first course had
been removed. When he reached the dining-room the old maid said, with

a tone of voice in which were mingled sour rebuke and joy at being
able to blame him:--

"It is half-past four, Monsieur Birotteau. You know we are not to wait
for you."

The vicar looked at the clock in the dining-room, and saw at once, by
the way the gauze which protected it from dust had been moved, that

his landlady had opened the face of the dial and set the hands in
advance of the clock of the cathedral. He could make no remark. Had he

uttered his suspicion it would only have caused and apparently
justified one of those fierce and eloquent expositions to which

Mademoiselle Gamard, like other women of her class, knew very well how
to give vent in particular cases. The thousand and one annoyances

which a servant will sometimes make her master bear, or a woman her
husband, were instinctively divined by Mademoiselle Gamard and used

upon Birotteau. The way in which she delighted in plotting against the
poor vicar's domestic comfort bore all the marks of what we must call

a profoundlymalignantgenius. Yet she so managed that she was never,
so far as eye could see, in the wrong.

III
Eight days after the date on which this history began, the new

arrangements of the household and the relations which grew up between
the Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard revealed to the former the

existence of a plot which had been hatching for the last six months.
As long as the old maid exercised her vengeance in an underhand way,

and the vicar was able to shut his eyes to it and refuse to believe in
her malevolent intentions, the moral effect upon him was slight. But

since the affair of the candlestick and the altered clock, Birotteau
would doubt no longer that he was under an eye of hatred turned fully

upon him. From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the
skinny, clawlike fingers of Mademoiselle Gamard ready to hook into his

heart. The old maid, happy in a sentiment as fruitful of emotions as
that of vengeance, enjoyed circling and swooping above the vicar as a

bird of prey hovers and swoops above a field-mouse before pouncing
down upon it and devouring it. She had long since laid a plan which

the poor dumbfounded priest was quite incapable of imagining, and
which she now proceeded to unfold with that genius for little things

often shown by solitary persons, whose souls, incapable of feeling the
grandeur of true piety, fling themselves into the details of outward

devotion.
The petty nature of his troubles prevented Birotteau, always effusive

and liking to be pitied and consoled, from enjoying the soothing
pleasure of taking his friends into his confidence,--a last but cruel

aggravation of his misery. The little amount of tact which he derived
from his timidity made him fear to seem ridiculous in concerning

himself with such pettiness. And yet those petty things made up the
sum of his existence,--that cherished existence, full of busyness

about nothings, and of nothingness in its business; a colorless barren
life in which strong feelings were misfortunes, and the absence of

emotion happiness. The poor priest's paradise was changed, in a
moment, into hell. His sufferings became intolerable. The terror he

felt at the prospect of a discussion with Mademoiselle Gamard
increased day by day; the secret distress which blighted his life

began to injure his health. One morning, as he put on his mottled blue
stockings, he noticed a marked dimunition in the circumference of his

calves. Horrified by so cruel and undeniable a symptom, he resolved to
make an effort and appeal to the Abbe Troubert, requesting him to

intervene, officially, between Mademoiselle Gamard and himself.
When he found himself in presence of the imposing canon, who, in order

to receive his visitor in a bare and cheerless room, had hastily
quitted a study full of papers, where he worked incessantly, and where

no one was ever admitted, the vicar felt half ashamed at speaking of
Mademoiselle Gamard's provocations to a man who appeared to be so

gravely occupied. But after going through the agony of the mental
deliberations which all humble, undecided, and feeble persons endure

about things of even no importance, he decided, not without much
swelling and beating of the heart, to explain his position to the Abbe

Troubert.
The canon listened in a cold, grave manner, trying, but in vain, to

repress an occasional smile which to more intelligent eyes than those
of the vicar might have betrayed the emotions of a secret

satisfaction. A flame seemed to dart from his eyelids when Birotteau
pictured with the eloquence of genuine feeling the constant bitterness

he was made to swallow; but Troubert laid his hand above those lids
with a gesture very common to thinkers, maintaining the dignified

demeanor which was usual with him. When the vicar had ceased to speak
he would indeed have been puzzled had he sought on Troubert's face,

marbled with yellow blotches even more yellow than his usually bilious
skin, for any trace of the feelings he must have excited in that

mysterious priest.
After a moment's silence the canon made one of those answers which

required long study before their meaning could be thoroughly
perceived, though later they proved to reflecting persons the

astonishing depths of his spirit and the power of his mind. He simply
crushed Birotteau by telling him that "these things amazed him all the

more because he should never have suspected their existence were it
not for his brother's confession. He attributed such stupidity on his

part to the gravity of his occupations, his labors, the absorption in
which his mind was held by certain elevated thoughts which prevented

his taking due notice of the petty details of life." He made the vicar
observe, but without appearing to censure the conduct of a man whose

age and connections deserved all respect, that "in former days,
recluses thought little about their food and lodging in the solitude

of their retreats, where they were lost in holy contemplations," and
that "in our days, priests could make a retreat for themselves in the

solitude of their own hearts." Then, reverting to Birotteau's affairs,
he added that "such disagreements were a novelty to him. For twelve