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"Ah! you don't understand political exigencies." During this evening, which seemed interminable to Madame Rabourdin, another scene was occurring in the place Royale, one of those comedies which are played in seven Parisian salons whenever there is a change of ministry. The Saillards' salon was crowded.
Though the Saillards' circle of acquaintance increased, neither their ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint's-days of father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully observed, also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter, Christmas, New Year's day, and Epiphany.
In fact, the Saillards did not know how better to manage their savings than to carry them, five thousand francs at a time, to their notary, Monsieur Sorbier, Cardot's predecessor, and let him invest them at five per cent in first mortgages, with the wife's rights reserved in case the borrower was married!
Falleix had been brought to the Saillard's house by old Bidault, who lent him money on his merchandise. Falleix thought his old countryman extortionate, and complained to the Saillards that Gigonnet demanded eighteen per cent from an Auvergnat. Madame Saillard ventured to remonstrate with her uncle.
Thus the Phellions formed a phalanx of seven persons; the Collevilles were not less numerous; so that on Sundays it often appeared that thirty persons were assembled in the Thuillier salon. Thuillier renewed acquaintance with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and Falleixs, all persons of respectability in the quarter of the Palais-Royal, whom they often invited to dinner.
Twenty-six years of age, a worker working without purpose, steady as a girl, monotonous and apathetic, holding cafes, cigars, and horsemanship in detestation, going to bed regularly at ten o'clock and rising at seven, gifted with some social talents, such as playing quadrille music on the flute, which first brought him into favor with the Saillards and the Baudoyers.
A new hat for Saillard was a matter of deliberation; the time a coat could last was estimated and discussed; umbrellas were carefully hung up by means of a brass buckle. Since 1804 no repairs of any kind had been done to the house. The Saillards kept the ground-floor in precisely the state in which their predecessor left it.
Elisabeth thought "the comedy" as wearisome as the plague of flies, and never wished to see another. The Saillards always made haste to reach the place early so as to choose the best seats, and found much entertainment in watching the passers-by. In those days the Cafe Ture was the rendezvous of the fashionable society of the Marais, the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the circumjacent regions.
The Saillards were therefore enjoying an income of not less than seventeen thousand francs a year. The whole ambition of the good man now centred on obtaining the cross of the Legion and his retiring pension. Elisabeth, the only child, had toiled steadily from infancy in a home where the customs of life were rigid and the ideas simple.
Once offended, she watched her adversaries with the perfidious patience of a cat, and was capable of bringing about some cold and complete vengeance, and then laying it to the account of God. Until her marriage the Saillards lived without other society than that of the Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed vicar of Saint-Paul's after the restoration of Catholic worship.
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