Mr. Saul continued to play his hand bravely in his interview with Mr. Clavering, whose strongest card was that Mr. Saul, though a gentleman, was not in his class. And of course the nuances of class were to be of no avail in England in coming decades. Some would persist, but many of these nuances, which were relied upon by those such as Mr. Clavering, who did not work, would fall to the energy of such men as Mr. Burton and Mr. Saul, who did work. In this case, Mr. Clavering bravely declared that Mr. Saul would have to give up his pretensions for Fanny's hand, or leave the parish--which would have left Mr. Clavering without the services of someone to do his work for him. And Mr. Saul called his bluff, declaring that he would leave the parish rather than renounce his claim for Fanny's hand. As it turned out, all parties stood their ground, and Fanny assumed the role of "a broken-hearted young lady." But this is fairy tale as well as soap opera, and all tears are wiped away in a series of events that open up the position of rector of the parish to the steadfast Mr. Saul, thus removing the last excuse the family had for opposing the union--somewhat to the sacrifice of "cakes and ale in the parish," to Mr. Clavering's regret. Other less worthy persons claim the reader's attention, two of whom, Archie Clavering and Captain Boodle, provide a welcome bit of comic relief when Mr. Boodle, habitué of the racecourses and "fast friend" of Captain Archie Clavering, the ne'er do well brother of Sir Hugh Clavering, advises Archie about how to advance his courtship of Lady Ongar. Archie knows deep down that he has no chance. "In some inexplicable manner he put himself into the scales and weighed himself, and discovered his own weight with fair accuracy. And he put her into the scales, and he found that she was much the heavier of the two." But Boodle knows too much about horses to allow his friend to shortchange himself in his suit, comparing courtship to riding a trained mare: "I always choose that she shall know that I'm there." Use the spurs if you have to. Needless to say, Archie's sense of his own weight is a more accurate predictor than Boodle's advice; but Archie and Captain Boodle also attempt to invoke the assistance of Lady Ongar's friend Sophie Gordeloupe, who routs them both. Madame Gordeloupe was a "Franco-Pole," who "spoke English with great fluency, but every word uttered declared her not to be English." In Trollope's English world, she was the classic devious foreigner. Some said that she was a Russian spy. "How could any decent English man or woman wish for the friendship of such a creature as that?"