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Updated: June 12, 2025
Therefore the abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing rejected. "Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world, and a good liver!
For though Mademoiselle Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that, thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other devout ladies who were in the habit of receiving the pious and ecclesiastical society of Tours.
"Your intention of ceasing to reside in Mademoiselle Gamard's house being made evident " began the man of business. "Eh! monsieur," cried the Abbe Birotteau, interrupting him, "I have not the slightest intention of leaving it."
He ended by assuring the vicar that "if he stayed a few years longer in Mademoiselle Gamard's house he would learn to understand her better and acknowledge the real value of her excellent nature." Birotteau left the room confounded.
Now if those persons who in the course of their lives have attained to the enjoyment of a long desired happiness and have therefore comprehended the joy of the vicar when he stepped into Chapeloud's vacant place, they will also have gained some faint idea of Mademoiselle Gamard's distress at the overthrow of her favorite plan.
"On hearing of her illness," replied the baroness, "I entreated Monsieur Birotteau to relinquish his claims; I have brought the document, intending to give it to that excellent woman." There was silence for a moment. "Mademoiselle Gamard's temporal affairs do not concern me," said the priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil his emotions.
To be Mademoiselle Gamard's boarder and to become a canon were the two great desires of his life; in fact they do present accurately the ambition of a priest, who, considering himself on the highroad to eternity, can wish for nothing in this world but good lodging, good food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy self-love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say, into the presence of God, for there are grades among the saints.
He took the paper Monsieur Caron had given him and read it, as if he were giving his mind to the lawyer's document, but the act was merely mechanical. He signed the paper, by which he declared that he left Mademoiselle Gamard's house of his own wish and will, and that he had been fed and lodged while there according to the terms originally agreed upon.
All this part of the exterior of the cathe- dral is very brown, ancient, Gothic, grotesque; Balzac calls the whole place "a desert of stone." Mademoiselle Gamard's house, where she took her two abbes to board, and basely conspired with one against the other, is still further round the cathe- dral.
He ended by assuring the vicar that "if he stayed a few years longer in Mademoiselle Gamard's house he would learn to understand her better and acknowledge the real value of her excellent nature." Birotteau left the room confounded.
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