Madame Gorju came up to Bianchon, seeing him pensive, and with a glance towards her daughter Mademoiselle Euphemie Gorju, the owner of a fairly good fortune--“What a rhodomontade!” said she. “The prescriptions you write are worth more than all that rubbish.” The Mayoress had elaborately worked up this speech, which, in her opinion, showed strong judgment. “Well, madame, we must be lenient, we have but twenty pages out of a thousand,” said Bianchon, looking at Mademoiselle Gorju, whose figure threatened terrible things after the birth of her first child. “Well, Monsieur de Clagny,” said Lousteau, “we were talking yesterday of the forms of revenge invented by husbands. What do you say to those invented by wives?” “I say,” replied the Public Prosecutor, “that the romance is not by a Councillor of State, but by a woman. For extravagant inventions the imagination of women far outdoes that of men; witness _Frankenstein_ by Mrs. Shelley, _Leone Leoni_ by George Sand, the works of Anne Radcliffe, and the _Nouveau Promethee_ (New Prometheus) of Camille de Maupin.” Dinah looked steadily at Monsieur de Clagny, making him feel, by an expression that gave him a chill, that in spite of the illustrious examples he had quoted, she regarded this as a reflection on _Paquita la Sevillane_. “Pooh!” said little Baudraye, “the Duke of Bracciano, whom his wife puts into a cage, and to whom she shows herself every night in the arms of her lover, will kill her--and do you call that revenge?--Our laws and our society are far more cruel.” “Why, little La Baudraye is talking!” said Monsieur Boirouge to his wife. “Why, the woman is left to live on a small allowance, the world turns its back on her, she has no more finery, and no respect paid her--the two things which, in my opinion, are the sum-total of woman,” said the little old man. “But she has happiness!” said Madame de la Baudraye sententiously. “No,” said the master of the house, lighting his candle to go to bed, “for she has a lover.” “For a man who thinks of nothing but his vine-stocks and poles, he has some spunk,” said Lousteau. “Well, he must have something!” replied Bianchon. Madame de la Baudraye, the only person who could hear Bianchon’s remark, laughed so knowingly, and at the same time so bitterly, that the physician could guess the mystery of this woman’s life; her premature wrinkles had been puzzling him all day.