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Updated: May 23, 2025
M. du Ronceret, president of the Tribunal; M. Sauvager, deputy Public Prosecutor; and M. du Coudrai, a registrar of mortgages, who had lost his post by voting on the wrong side, were the only persons who were supposed to know about it; but Mesdames du Ronceret and du Coudrai had told the news, in strict confidence, to one or two intimate friends, so that it had spread half over the semi-noble, semi-bourgeois assembly at M. du Croisier's.
About half past eleven all had gone save intimates: M. Sauvager, M. Camusot, the examining magistrate, and his wife, M. and Mme. du Ronceret and their son Fabien, M. and Mme. du Coudrai, and Joseph Blondet, the eldest of an old judge; ten persons in all.
At this moment du Bousquier, who was playing whist with the chevalier and two old ladies, Madame du Coudrai and Madame du Ronceret, was the object of deep but silent curiosity. "Can my false front be crooked?" he asked himself, seized by one of those anxieties which beset old bachelors. He took advantage of a lost trick, which ended a seventh rubber, to rise and leave the table.
Under the circumstances in which Madame Schontz, Couture, and du Ronceret were placed, it is easy to imagine the effect produced upon the Heir by the following conversation which Maxime held with Couture in a corner and in a low voice, but so placed that Fabien could listen to them.
At this moment du Bousquier, who was playing whist with the chevalier and two old ladies, Madame du Coudrai and Madame du Ronceret, was the object of deep but silent curiosity. "Can my false front be crooked?" he asked himself, seized by one of those anxieties which beset old bachelors. He took advantage of a lost trick, which ended a seventh rubber, to rise and leave the table.
"Why do you make us dine with that queer fellow dressed like the head-waiter of a restaurant?" whispered Maxime to Madame Schontz, with a sign toward Fabien du Ronceret. "Have you never met the Heir? Du Ronceret of Alencon." "Monsieur," said Maxime to Fabien, "I think you must know my friend d'Esgrignon?"
There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now wife of Chief-Justice du Ronceret. As he entered, Gazonal made one remark only, but that remark was both legitimate and legitimist: "It is finer than the Tuileries!"
Ever since he had been confirmed in his present office by a royal decree, Monsieur du Ronceret had been in favor of du Bousquier. To others the purveyor seemed dangerous, a man of bad habits, capable of anything.
Aurelie thus expected nine guests, all men of the first ability, with the exception of du Ronceret; but the Norman vanity and the brutal ambition of the Heir were fully on a par with Claude Vignon's literary power, Nathan's poetic gift, La Palferine's finesse, Couture's financial eye, Bixiou's wit, Finot's shrewdness, Maxime's profound diplomacy, and Leon de Lora's genius.
President du Ronceret, and the public prosecutor likewise, lent themselves admirably, so far as was compatible with their duty as magistrates, to the design of letting off the offender as easily as possible; indeed, they went deliberately out of their way to do this, well pleased to raise a Liberal clamor against their overlarge concessions.
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