After her husband’s death, Madame de Tecle lived with her father-in-law, but passed much of her time with her uncle. She busied herself with the greatest solicitude in the education of her daughter, and kept house for both the old men, by both of whom she was equally idolized. From the lips of the priest at Reuilly, whom he called on next day, Camors learned some of these details, while the old man practiced the violoncello with his heavy spectacles on his nose. Despite his fixed resolution of preserving universal scorn, Camors could not resist a vague feeling of respect for Madame de Tecle; but it did not entirely eradicate the impure sentiment he was disposed to dedicate to her. Fully determined to make her, if not his victim, at least his ally, he felt that this enterprise was one of unusual difficulty. But he was energetic, and did not object to difficulties--especially when they took such charming shape as in the present instance. His meditations on this theme occupied him agreeably the rest of that week, during which time he overlooked his workmen and conferred with his architect. Besides, his horses, his books, his domestics, and his journals arrived successively to dispel ennui. Therefore he looked remarkably well when he jumped out of his dog-cart the ensuing Monday in front of M. des Rameures’s door under the eyes of Madame de Tecle. As the latter gently stroked with her white hand the black and smoking shoulder of the thoroughbred Fitz-Aymon, Camors was for the first time presented to the Comte de Tecle, a quiet, sad, and taciturn old gentleman. The cure, the subprefect of the district and his wife, the tax-collector, the family physician, and the tutor completed, as the journals say, the list of the guests. During dinner Camors, secretly excited by the immediate vicinity of Madame de Tecle, essayed to triumph over that hostility that the presence of a stranger invariably excites in the midst of intimacies which it disturbs. His calm superiority asserted itself so mildly it was pardoned for its grace. Without a gayety unbecoming his mourning, he nevertheless made such lively sallies and such amusing jokes about his first mishaps at Reuilly as to break up the stiffness of the party. He conversed pleasantly with each one in turn, and, seeming to take the deepest interest in his affairs, put him at once at his ease. He skilfully gave M. des Rameures the opportunity for several happy quotations; spoke naturally to him of artificial pastures, and artificially of natural pastures; of breeding and of non-breeding cows; of Dishley sheep--and of a hundred other matters he had that morning crammed from an old encyclopaedia and a county almanac.