These exaggerated reports loudly proclaimed on the Mall brought sixteen persons to Anzy that evening, some in family coaches, some in wagonettes, and a few bachelors on hired saddle horses. By about seven o’clock this provincial company had made a more or less graceful entry into the huge Anzy drawing-room, which Dinah, warned of the invasion, had lighted up, giving it all the lustre it was capable of by taking the holland covers off the handsome furniture, for she regarded this assembly as one of her great triumphs. Lousteau, Bianchon, and Dinah exchanged meaning looks as they studied the attitudes and listened to the speeches of these visitors, attracted by curiosity.
What invalided ribbons, what ancestral laces, what ancient flowers, more imaginative than imitative, were boldly displayed on some perennial caps! The Presidente Boirouge, Bianchon’s cousin, exchanged a few words with the doctor, from whom she extracted some “advice gratis” by expatiating on certain pains in the chest, which she declared were nervous, but which he ascribed to chronic indigestion.
“Simply drink a cup of tea every day an hour after dinner, as the English do, and you will get over it, for what you suffer from is an English malady,” Bianchon replied very gravely.
“He is certainly a great physician,” said the Presidente, coming back to Madame de Clagny, Madame Popinot-Chandier, and Madame Gorju, the Mayor’s wife.
“They say,” replied Madame de Clagny behind her fan, “that Dinah sent for him, not so much with a view to the elections as to ascertain why she has no children.”
In the first excitement of this success, Lousteau introduced the great doctor as the only possible candidate at the ensuing elections. But Bianchon, to the great satisfaction of the new Sous-prefet, remarked that it seemed to him almost impossible to give up science in favor of politics.
“Only a physician without a practice,” said he, “could care to be returned as a deputy. Nominate statesmen, thinkers, men whose knowledge is universal, and who are capable of placing themselves on the high level which a legislator should occupy. That is what is lacking in our Chambers, and what our country needs.”
Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women stared at Lousteau as if he were a mountebank.
“Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty thousand francs a year by his writings,” observed the Mayor’s wife to Madame de Clagny. “Can you believe it?”
“Is it possible? Why, a Public Prosecutor gets but a thousand crowns!”