natural character, which prompted him to avoid a quarrel.

Torn by this inwardmisery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively
the broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom

immemorial, Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time,
without regard to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on

its surface. The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated
arm-chairs on either side of the square table, the head of which was

taken by the landlady, who seemed to dominate the whole from a high
chair raised on casters, filled with cushions, and standing very near

to the dining-room stove. This room and the salon were on the ground-
floor beneath the salon and bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.

When the vicar had received his cup of coffee, duly sugared, from
Mademoiselle Gamard, he felt chilled to the bone at the grim silence

in which he was forced to proceed with the usually gay function of
breakfast. He dared not look at Troubert's dried-up features, nor at

the threatening visage of the old maid; and he therefore turned, to
keep himself in countenance, to the plethoric pug which was lying on a

cushion near the stove,--a position that victim of obesity seldom
quitted, having a little plate of dainties always at his left side,

and a bowl of fresh water at his right.
"Well, my pretty," said the vicar, "are you waiting for your coffee?"

The personage thus addressed, one of the most important in the
household, though the least troublesome inasmuch as he had ceased to

bark and left the talking to his mistress, turned his little eyes,
sunk in rolls of fat, upon Birotteau. Then he closed them peevishly.

To explain the misery of the poor vicar it should be said that being
endowed by nature with an empty and sonorous loquacity, like the

resounding of a football, he was in the habit of asserting, without
any medical reason to back him, that speech favored digestion.

Mademoiselle Gamard, who believed in this hygienic doctrine, had not
as yet refrained, in spite of their coolness, from talking at meals;

though, for the last few mornings, the vicar had been forced to strain
his mind to find beguiling topics on which to loosen her tongue. If

the narrow limits of this history permitted us to report even one of
the conversations which often brought a bitter and sarcastic smile to

the lips of the Abbe Troubert, it would offer a finished picture of
the Boeotian life of the provinces. The singular revelations of the

Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard relating to their personal
opinions on politics, religion, and literature would delight observing

minds. It would be highly entertaining to transcribe the reasons on
which they mutually doubted the death of Napoleon in 1820, or the

conjectures by which they mutually believed that the Dauphin was
living,--rescued from the Temple in the hollow of a huge log of wood.

Who could have helped laughing to hear them assert and prove, by
reasons evidently their own, that the King of France alone imposed the

taxes, that the Chambers were convoked to destroy the clergy, that
thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished on the scaffold during

the Revolution? They frequently discussed the press, without either of
them having the faintest idea of what that modern engine really was.

Monsieur Birotteau listened with acceptance to Mademoiselle Gamard
when she told him that a man who ate an egg every morning would die in

a year, and that facts proved it; that a roll of light bread eaten
without drinking for several days together would cure sciatica; that

all the workmen who assisted in pulling down the Abbey Saint-Martin
had died in six months; that a certain prefect, under orders from

Bonaparte, had done his best to damage the towers of Saint-Gatien,--
with a hundred other absurd tales.

But on this occasion poor Birotteau felt he was tongue-tied, and he
resigned himself to eat a meal without engaging in conversation. After

a while, however, the thought crossed his mind that silence was
dangerous for his digestion, and he boldly remarked, "This coffee is

excellent."
That act of courage was completely wasted. Then, after looking at the

scrap of sky visible above the garden between the two buttresses of
Saint-Gatien, the vicar again summoned nerve to say, "It will be finer

weather to-day than it was yesterday."
At that remark Mademoiselle Gamard cast her most gracious look on the

Abbe Troubert, and immediately turned her eyes with terrible severity
on Birotteau, who fortunately" target="_blank" title="ad.幸运地">fortunately by that time was looking on his plate.

No creature of the feminine gender was ever more capable of presenting
to the mind the elegaic nature of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie

Gamard. In order to describe a being whose character gives a momentous
interest to the petty events of the present drama and to the anterior

lives of the actors in it, it may be useful to give a summary of the
ideas which find expression in the being of an Old Maid,--remembering

always that the habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the
physical presence.

Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to
have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose

and utility seem inexplicable. Moral philosophy and political economy
both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills

a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,--
for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made

manifest. It is seldom that old maids of their own motion enter the
ranks of these unproductive beings. Now, if the consciousness of work

done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to
support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would

think, produce a contrary effect, and fill the minds of such fruitless
beings with the same contempt for themselves which they inspire in

others. This harsh social reprobation is one of the causes which
contribute to fill the souls of old maids with the distress that

appears in their faces. Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast,
throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the

woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or
endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a

period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact
of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of

their characters ought to have compensated for their natural
imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact

argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible
to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on

the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a
desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their

disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed
those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the

pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the
consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights.

Moreover, the generoussentiments, the exquisite qualities of a woman
will not develop unless by constant exercise. By remaining unmarried,

a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and
cold, she creates repulsion. This implacable judgment of the world is

unfortunately" target="_blank" title="ad.幸运地">fortunately too just to leave old maids in ignorance of its causes.
Such ideas shoot up in their hearts as naturally as the effects of

their saddened lives appear upon their features. Consequently they
wither, because the constant expression of happiness which blooms on

the faces of other women and gives so soft a grace to their movements
has never existed for them. They grow sharp and peevish because all

human beings who miss their vocation are unhappy; they suffer, and
suffering gives birth to the bitterness of ill-will. In fact, before

an old maid blames herself for her isolation she blames others, and
there is but one step between reproach and the desire for revenge.

But more than this, the ill grace and want of charm noticeable in
these women are the necessary result of their lives. Never having felt

a desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are
foreign to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct

brings them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most
convenient to themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be

more agreeable to others. Without rendering account to their own minds
of the difference between themselves and other women, they end by

feeling that difference and suffering under it. Jealousy is an
indelible sentiment in the female breast. An old maid's soul is

jealous and yet void; for she knows but one side--the miserable side--
of the only passion men will allow (because it flatters them) to

women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes, forced to deny themselves the
natural development of their natures, old maids endure an inward

torment to which they never grow accustomed. It is hard at any age,
above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of

others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to
emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that

an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from
fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false

position because they never forgive themselves for it.
Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with