Vermut was the butt of Madame Soudry’s salon. No society is complete without a victim,--without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his little green surtout spotted. The little man, gifted with the patience of a chemist, could not enjoy (that is the term employed in the provinces to express the abolition of domestic rule) Madame Vermut,--a charming woman, a lively woman, capital company (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say nothing), a woman who railed at her husband, annoyed him with epigrams, and declared him to be an imbecile unable to distil anything but dulness. Madame Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the life and soul of amusement and who set things going. She supplied the salt of her little world, kitchen-salt, it is true; her jokes were somewhat broad, but society forgave them; though she was capable of saying to the cure Taupin, a man of seventy years of age, with white hair, “Hold your tongue, my lad.” The miller of Soulanges, possessing an income of fifty thousand francs, had an only daughter whom Lupin desired for his son Amaury, since he had lost the hope of marrying him to Gaubertin’s daughter. This miller, a Sarcus-Taupin, was the Nucingen of the little town. He was supposed to be thrice a millionaire; but he never transacted business with others, and thought only of grinding his wheat and keeping a monopoly of it; his most noticeable point was a total absence of politeness and good manners. The elder Guerbet, brother of the post-master at Conches, possessed an income of ten thousand francs, besides his salary as collector. The Gourdons were rich; the doctor had married the only daughter of old Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled, keeper of the forests and streams, whom the family were now _expecting to die_, while the poet had married the niece and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the curate of Soulanges, a stout priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese. This clever ecclesiastic, devoted to the leading society, kind and obliging to the second, apostolic to the poor and unfortunate, made himself beloved by the whole town. He was cousin of the miller and cousin of the Sarcuses, and belonged therefore to the neighborhood and to its mediocracy. He always dined out and saved expenses; he went to weddings but came away before the ball; he paid the costs of public worship, saying, “It is my business.” And the parish let him do it, with the remark, “We have an excellent priest.” The bishop, who knew the Soulanges people and was not at all misled as to the true value of the abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made religion acceptable, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy heads.