Imagine from this sketch of a normal evening the hubbub excited in Guerande homes by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the mere passage through the town, of a stranger.

When no sounds echoed from the baron’s chamber nor from that of his sister, the baroness looked at the rector, who was playing pensively with the counters.

“I see that you begin to share my anxiety about Calyste,” she said to him.

“Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s displeased looks to-night?” asked the rector.

“Yes,” replied the baroness.

“She has, as I know, the best intentions about our dear Calyste; she loves him as though he were her son, his conduct in Vendee beside his father, the praises that MADAME bestowed upon his devotion, have only increased her affection for him.  She intends to execute a deed of gift by which she gives her whole property at her death to whichever of her nieces Calyste marries.  I know that you have another and much richer marriage in Ireland for your dear Calyste, but it is well to have two strings to your bow.  In case your family will not take charge of Calyste’s establishment, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s fortune is not to be despised.  You can always find a match of seven thousand francs a year for the dear boy, but it is not often that you could come across the savings of forty years and landed property as well managed, built up, and kept in repair as that of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.  That ungodly woman, Mademoiselle des Touches, has come here to ruin many excellent things.  Her life is now known.”

“And what is it?” asked the mother.

“Oh! that of a trollop,” replied the rector,—­“a woman of questionable morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors; squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a devilish society, in short.  She writes books herself, and has taken a false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her own.  She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church except to look at the pictures.  She has spent quite a fortune in decorating Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women.  There is more wine drunk there, they say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole year round in Guerande.  The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings last year to men with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they sang wicked songs which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and spent their time mostly at Les Touches.  And this is the woman our dear Calyste adores!  If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous books in which the atheists of the present day scoff at holy things, Calyste would saddle his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it.  I am not sure that he would do as much for the Church.  Moreover, this Breton woman is not a royalist!  If Calyste were again called upon to strike a blow for the cause, and Mademoiselle des Touches—­the Sieur Camille Maupin, that is her other name, as I have just remembered—­if she wanted to keep him with her the chevalier would let his old father go to the field without him.”