“They are simply impudent,” said Julliard. “To hear them talk you would suppose there was no other handsome house in Provins but theirs. They want to crush us; and after all, they have hardly enough to live on.”
“If it was only the brother,” said Madame Tiphaine, “one might put up with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter to find it out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse hyena and those lobster-claws of hands! Don’t repeat all this, Julliard.”
When Julliard had departed the little woman said to her husband:—
“I have aborigines enough whom I am forced to receive; these two will fairly kill me. With your permission, I shall deprive myself of their society.”
“You are mistress in your own house,” replied he; “but that will make enemies. The Rogrons will fling themselves into the opposition, which hitherto has had no real strength in Provins. That Rogron is already intimate with Baron Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet.”
“Then,” said Melanie, laughing, “they will do you some service. Where there are no opponents, there is no triumph. A liberal conspiracy, an illegal cabal, a struggle of any kind, will bring you into the foreground.”
The justice looked at his young wife with a sort of alarmed admiration.
The next day it was whispered about that the Rogrons had not altogether succeeded in Madame Tiphaine’s salon. That lady’s speech about an inn was immensely admired. It was a whole month before she returned Mademoiselle Sylvie’s visit. Insolence of this kind is very much noticed in the provinces.
During the evening which Sylvie had spent at Madame Tiphaine’s a disagreeable scene occurred between herself and old Madame Julliard while playing boston, apropos of a trick which Sylvie declared the old lady had made her lose on purpose; for the old maid, who liked to trip others, could never endure the same game on herself. The next time she was invited out the mistress took care to make up the card-tables before she arrived; so that Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table to table as an onlooker, the players glancing at her with scornful eyes. At Madame Julliard senior’s house, they played whist, a game Sylvie did not know.
The old maid at last understood that she was under a ban; but she had no conception of the reason of it. She fancied herself an object of jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother received no invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening visits. Satirical persons made fun of them,—not spitefully, but amusingly; inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their cornice, and their wonderful cellar of wine, the like of which was not in Provins.