The Vicar of Tours | Page 9

bitterness that the sense
of being kept outside the social pale puts into the heart of an old maid;
he therefore calculated his own treatment of Mademoiselle Gamard

very wisely. She was then about thirty-eight years old, and still retained
a few pretensions, which, in well-behaved persons of her condition,
change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem. The canon saw
plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he must pay her
invariably the same attentions and be more infallible than the pope
himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of contact
between himself and her except those that politeness demanded, and
those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the
same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular
three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing
Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also
avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends
with whom he spent his evenings. In this way he seldom saw his
landlady except at dinner; but he always came down to that meal a few
minutes in advance of the hour. During this visit of courtesy, as it may
be called, he talked to her, for the twelve years he had lived under her
roof, on nearly the same topics, receiving from her the same answers.
How she had slept, her breakfast, the trivial domestic events, her looks,
her health, the weather, the time the church services had lasted, the
incidents of the mass, the health of such or such a priest,--these were
the subjects of their daily conversation. During dinner he invariably
paid her certain indirect compliments; the fish had an excellent flavor;
the seasoning of a sauce was delicious; Mademoiselle Gamard's
capacities and virtues as mistress of a household were great. He was
sure of flattering the old maid's vanity by praising the skill with which
she made or prepared her preserves and pickles and pates and other
gastronomical inventions. To cap all, the wily canon never left his
landlady's yellow salon after dinner without remarking that there was
no house in Tours where he could get such good coffee as that he had
just imbibed.
Thanks to this thorough understanding of Mademoiselle Gamard's
character, and to the science of existence which he had put in practice
for the last twelve years, no matter of discussion on the internal
arrangements of the household had ever come up between them. The
Abbe Chapeloud had taken note of the spinster's angles, asperities, and
crabbedness, and had so arranged his avoidance of her that he obtained
without the least difficulty all the concessions that were necessary to

the happiness and tranquility of his life. The result was that
Mademoiselle Gamard frequently remarked to her friends and
acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,
extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.
As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing
about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a satellite
in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of intermediary
creature between the individuals of the human species and those of the
canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but directly before, the
place intended for friends but now occupied by a fat and wheezy pug
which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert completely, and the
intermingling of their interests was so obvious that many persons of her
social sphere believed that the Abbe Troubert had designs on the old
maid's property, and was binding her to him unawares with infinite
patience, and really directing her while he seemed to be obeying
without ever letting her percieve in him the slightest wish on his part to
govern her.
When the Abbe Chapeloud died, the old maid, who desired a lodger
with quiet ways, naturally thought of the vicar. Before the canon's will
was made known she had meditated offering his rooms to the Abbe
Troubert, who was not very comfortable on the ground-floor. But when
the Abbe Birotteau, on receiving his legacy, came to settle in writing
the terms of his board she saw he was so in love with the apartment, for
which he might now admit his long cherished desires, that she dared
not propose the exchange, and accordingly sacrificed her sentiments of
friendship to the demands of self-interest. But in order to console her
beloved canon, Mademoiselle took up the large white Chateau-Renaud
bricks that made the floors of his apartment and replaced them by
wooden floors laid in "point de Hongrie." She also rebuilt a smoky
chimney.
For twelve years the Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloud in
that house without ever giving a thought to the motive