"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province," replied Madame de Rênal emphatically. "If the king were free and could give birth its proper due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of Peers, etc. And being in this magnificent position, you yet wish to give the envious a fact to take hold of." "To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is equivalent to proclaiming over the whole of Verrières, nay, over the whole of Besançon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has been admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy _with a Rênal_, has managed to offend him. At the time when those letters which you have just taken prove that I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought to kill me. I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to show him your anger. Remember that all our neighbours are only waiting for an excuse to revenge themselves for your superiority. Remember that in 1816 you had a hand in certain arrests. "I think that you show neither consideration nor love for me," exclaimed M. de Rênal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory, "and I was not made a peer." "I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Rênal with a smile, "that I shall be richer than you are, that I have been your companion for twelve years, and that by virtue of those qualifications I am entitled to have a voice in the council and, above all, in to-day's business. If you prefer M. Julien to me," she added, with a touch of temper which was but thinly disguised, "I am ready to go and pass a winter with my aunt." These words proved a lucky shot. They possessed a firmness which endeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy. It decided M. de Rênal, but following the provincial custom, he still thought for a long time, and went again over all his arguments; his wife let him speak. There was still a touch of anger in his intonation. Finally two hours of futile rant exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during the whole night to a continuous fit of anger. He determined on the line of conduct he was going to follow with regard to M. Valenod, Julien and even Elisa.