He yawned, stretched himself, and said: “Getting back from Duroc hill, at six o’clock in the morning, I find two baker’s men in my hall, come to tell me that their mistress, the baker’s wife of the Tintelleries, has been brought to bed.” “But,” asked M. de Terremondre, “did it require two baker’s men to tell you that?” “They had sent them one after the other,” answered the doctor. “I ask if the characteristic symptoms have set in. They give me no answer, but a third baker’s man turns up in his master’s cart. Up I get and seat myself at his side. We take half a turn, and there I am rolling over the pavement of the Tintelleries.” “I have it!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre, who was pursuing his own thoughts. “It was in ’69 that she came out at the Vaudeville. And it was in ’76 that my cousin Courtrai knew her … and was intimate with her.” “Are you speaking of Jacques de Courtrai, who was a captain of dragoons?” “No, I am speaking of Agénor, who died in Brazil. … She has a son who left Saint-Cyr last year.” Thus spoke M. de Terremondre, just as M. Bergeret, professor of literature at the University, entered the shop. M. Bergeret held one of the three academic chairs of the Paillot establishment, and was the most indefatigable talker of the old-book corner. There, with a friendly hand, he used to turn over the leaves of books old and books new, and although he never bought a single volume, for fear of getting a wigging for it from his wife and three daughters, he received the heartiest welcome from Paillot, who held him in high esteem as a reservoir, an alembic, of that science and those belles-lettres on which booksellers live and flourish. The old-book corner was the only place in the town where M. Bergeret could sit in utter contentment, for at home Madame Bergeret chased him from room to room for different reasons of domestic administration; at the University, the Dean, in his hatred, forced him to give his lectures in a dark, unhealthy cellar, into which but few pupils descended, and all three classes in the town cast black looks at him for having called Jeanne d’Arc a military mascotte. Now M. Bergeret slipped into the old-book corner. “Good-day, gentlemen! Anything new?” “A baby to the baker’s wife in the Tintelleries,” said the doctor. “I brought it into the world just twenty minutes ago. I was going to tell M. de Terremondre about it. And I may add that it wasn’t without difficulty.” “This child,” replied the professor, “hesitated to be born. He would never have consented to it if, being gifted with understanding and foresight, he had known the destiny of man on the earth, and more especially in our town.” “It is a pretty little girl,” said the doctor, “a pretty little girl with a raspberry mark under the left breast.” The conversation continued between the doctor and M. de Terremondre.