It was usually regulated according to certain points raised haphazard by Mme. Chambannes. The master replied with ingenuity, illustrating the past with facts from contemporary life, smoothing it over, thinning it down to the precise dimensions of his little pupil's brains. Zozé smelled the flowers as she listened to him, or arched her eyebrows in order to accentuate her zeal. Gradually, however, the teaching turned into a chat. Egypt, its chronology, mysteries and hieroglyphics were put aside. Mme. Chambannes confided to the master her amusements of the past few days or bits of social gossip, or she sketched for his benefit the character of some of her chief women friends. M. Raindal had no curious details to give of his own daily life and went back to the hard times of his youth. Zozé expressed much pity for him because he had greatly suffered from want and opened her tender eyes wide when he told her of certain privations he had undergone. Sometimes--and this with a persistence which was only worn out one day to reappear the next--she begged M. Raindal to translate the footnotes of his _Life of Cleopatra_ for her. Invariably the master refused, alleging that if he did, Mme. Chambannes would be the first to regret his compliance. Moreover, the greater number of the words belonged to what was termed low Latin and were untranslatable. He felt strangely oppressed when, one night, after dinner, the abbé Touronde called him aside and informed him that Mme. Chambannes had almost succeeded in becoming acquainted with the meaning of the forbidden annotations. "Would you believe it? The day before yesterday, she asked me if there existed a dictionary of low-Latin! I replied, 'Yes, Madame; there is the Dictionary of Du Cange.' ... 'Well, my dear abbé, please be so kind as to buy it for me!'... I smelled an evil temptation and replied, with some readiness of wit, I may well say: 'Alas, Madame! it is no longer on sale.... It has been out of print these forty years.' Later she admitted that she wanted it to translate your notes. You will agree that but for me...." M. Raindal warmly pressed the hand of the cautious ecclesiastic. Apart from the abbé Touronde, and in accordance with the particular desire of the master, Mme. Chambannes invited only her near relatives on Thursdays, such as her Uncle and Aunt Panhias or the Marquis de Meuze, who had solicited the favor of being a guest at those select dinners. Gerald was afraid of being bored and scarcely ever attended them. Zozé took pride in this constant abstention, taking it for a symptom of a jealousy she had never hoped to arouse.