Aristide called on Madame Coquereau, who entertained him with sweet Frontignan wine, dry sponge cakes and conversation. After a while he was invited to dinner. In a short space of time he became the intimate friend of the house, and played piquet with Madame Coquereau, and grew familiar with the family secrets. First he learned that Mademoiselle Stéphanie would go to a husband with two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Aristide's heart panted at the feet of Mademoiselle Stéphanie. Further he gathered that, though Monsieur Coquereau was a personage of great dignity and importance in civic affairs, he was as but a little child in his own house. Madame Coquereau held the money-bags. Her son had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau meant immediate poverty and the testamentary assignment of Madame Coquereau's fortune to various religious establishments. None of the objects of Monsieur Coquereau's matrimonial desire had pleased Madame Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau's blushing candidates had caused a pulse in Monsieur Coquereau's being to beat the faster. The Mayor held his mother in professed adoration and holy terror. She held him in abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stéphanie, she kept on saying "_Oui, Monsieur_" and "_Non, Monsieur_," in a crescendo of maddening demureness. So passed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor's office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, while Mademoiselle Stéphanie, model of modest piety, worked pure but nameless birds and flowers on her embroidery frame. Monsieur le Maire, of course, played his game of manilla at the café, after dinner, and generally came home just before Aristide took his leave. If it had not been for the presence of Mademoiselle Stéphanie, it would not have been gay for Aristide. But love gilded the moments.