The licensed talkers were M. Beaufrelant, who, they said, cultivated the flowers of rhetoric with the same zeal and the same success as the flowers of the soil; Mme. de la Vaudraye, who specialized in literary discussions; M. Lartiste, who, as a printer, was naturally marked out for the loftiest philosophical speculations; M. Simare the elder, a remarkable spinner of anecdotes; and, lastly, M. Charmeron and his sister-in-law, Mme. Bottentuit, who found, in their morbid need for contradicting and disputing with each other, an inexhaustible source of opinions, witticisms and banter. Outside these privileged and, so to speak, official protagonists, it was very seldom that any one ventured to open his mouth. Gilberte, who was beginning to feel terribly bored, listened without a word, which was taken for a sign of admiring deference. The truth is that this oratorical joust surprised her greatly. All these people, speaking turn and turn about, seemed to be pursuing so many different conversations, each of them thinking only of shining in the department that had devolved upon himself. M. Lartiste, who had talked his best on capital punishment, the subject in which he excelled, was answered by Mme. de la Vaudraye with a vigorous parallel between the respective merits of Victor Hugo and Lamartine, which parallel was duly refuted in a lyrical outburst from M. Beaufrelant on the bulbs of the double dahlia. And the utmost seriousness presided over all this incoherence, each disputant confounding, with deadly earnestness, the interlocutor in whom he saw such another indomitable as himself. And the dumb circle of hearers listened with nods and grunts of approval, as though these strange discussions had excited them to the highest pitch. “Well ... and you?” said Mme. de la Vaudraye to M. Simare the elder, at the exact moment when the ardour of the tourney seemed about to wane. “Are you not in form to-day?” M. Simare, the anecdotist, smiled. His strong point lay in saying nothing until he was questioned; and his dry silence, rich in promise, lent enormous value to the one anecdote to which he treated you each evening, after carefully preparing, polishing, repolishing and chipping it like a precious stone. Everybody burst out laughing before he even opened his mouth: it was understood from his manner that the story would be a little ... naughty. He said: “I do not know if I can speak. There are young ears present.” A movement on the part of the mothers, a glance; and the five young ladies disappeared “without seeming to.” He insisted: “All the same, I feel bound to warn you that it is a very risqué story. I shall call a spade a spade: local colour demands it.” “Go on, M. Simare!” said somebody. “We are all married people here!” Gilberte was sitting in the front row of chairs, understanding nothing of the departure of the young girls nor of all this preamble and in absolute ignorance of what was looming ahead.