M. de Saintot, otherwise Astolphe, President of the Agricultural Society, a tall, stout, high-colored personage, usually appeared in the wake of his wife, Elisa, a lady with a countenance like a withered fern, called Lili by her friends—­a baby name singularly at variance with its owner’s character and demeanor.  Mme. de Saintot was a solemn and extremely pious woman, and a very trying partner at a game of cards.  Astolphe was supposed to be a scientific man of the first rank.  He was as ignorant as a carp, but he had compiled the articles on Sugar and Brandy for a Dictionary of Agriculture by wholesale plunder of newspaper articles and pillage of previous writers.  It was believed all over the department that M. Saintot was engaged upon a treatise on modern husbandry; but though he locked himself into his study every morning, he had not written a couple of pages in a dozen years.  If anybody called to see him, he always contrived to be discovered rummaging among his papers, hunting for a stray note or mending a pen; but he spent the whole time in his study on puerilities, reading the newspaper through from end to end, cutting figures out of corks with his penknife, and drawing patterns on his blotting-paper.  He would turn over the leaves of his Cicero to see if anything applicable to the events of the day might catch his eye, and drag his quotation by the heels into the conversation that evening saying, “There is a passage in Cicero which might have been written to suit modern times,” and out came his phrase, to the astonishment of his audience.  “Really,” they said among themselves, “Astolphe is a well of learning.”  The interesting fact circulated all over the town, and sustained the general belief in M. de Saintot’s abilities.

After this pair came M. de Bartas, known as Adrien among the circle.  It was M. de Bartas who boomed out his song in a bass voice, and made prodigious claims to musical knowledge.  His self-conceit had taken a stand upon solfeggi; he began by admiring his appearance while he sang, passed thence to talking about music, and finally to talking of nothing else.  His musical tastes had become a monomania; he grew animated only on the one subject of music; he was miserable all evening until somebody begged him to sing.  When he had bellowed one of his airs, he revived again; strutted about, raised himself on his heels, and received compliments with a deprecating air; but modesty did not prevent him from going from group to group for his meed of praise; and when there was no more to be said about the singer, he returned to the subject of the song, discussing its difficulties or extolling the composer.