The court circle was perforce a narrow one. Those who had not the entree to Versailles withdrew to their estates when the queen retired to Trianon, and there drank milk and made believe to hunt, or acted tragedies and spouted epic poesy, pretending to be vastly entertained; not but what they were ready to rush back to the capital with all despatch when Fashion declared it possible. But then, of late years, the decrees of Fashion had been sorely interfered with by that aggressive Third Estate. Refusal to pay rents was annoying, but an evil to which all were accustomed. In some parts evil-disposed persons declared landlords to be the natural foes of the sovereign people, and discussed how the vermin was to be got rid of. A deep-rooted, bitter hate, sprung from long and systematic oppression, divided class from class by an intangible but impenetrable barrier; a hate that grew all the stronger, in that it had long been veiled by fear and lashed by supercilious scorn. Republicanism was in execrable taste--a subject for contemptuous laughter on the part of the provincial seigneurie. Its exponents bore on a pole a turnip with a candle in it, which could frighten none but children. The country nobility attached no special meaning to the unseemly snarling. Until the great crash came, and the rural palaces were sacked and burned, the seigneurie never fully realized the thinness of the crust they had been dancing on. In certain provinces it had been unsafe for some time past for landlords to show their noses at all, much less prate of paying rent. These not unwillingly left their chateaux to fate, whereby the condition of small shopkeepers and such local fry was not ameliorated. In more favoured districts dislike and discontent lay smouldering, and my lords were still free to amuse themselves with their guests from town, indifferent to the feelings of the masses. The de Vaux family were not of the court circle; indeed, they rarely travelled to the metropolis, but were content to ape its manners from a distance. The trio were dull enough, as narrow in their views and as obstinately fixed in the tenets of their grandsires as most country gentlefolk are, but they were well intentioned, and availed themselves of the earliest opportunity to pay their respects at Lorge. Gabrielle received them with open arms. Was she not bent on inaugurating a new era for herself and Clovis, and had she not been informed by her father's unseemly merriment, that it is not well to bore a husband? Not that the newcomers, who had driven over in the craziest of shanderydans, showed signs of being an acquisition. On the contrary. Long before the sun went down, Gabrielle felt that she could see too much of Madame de Vaux, while Clovis listened, marvelling, to the old gentleman's platitudes which were at least a century old.