Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/384

 Goupil, who is useful to everybody and is justly regarded as the wittiest man in Nemours, enjoys the esteem of all in the little town; but he is punished through his children, who are ugly, stunted and inclined to hydrocephalus. Dionis, his predecessor, flourishes in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he is one of the brightest ornaments, to the great satisfaction of the king, who sees Madame Dionis at all his balls. Madame Dionis gives the whole town of Nemours the details of her receptions at the Tuileries and of the grandeur of the French King’s court; she reigns in Nemours, by means of the throne, which certainly became popular at that time.

Bongrand is president of the Court at Melun: his son is in a fair way to become a very creditable attorney-general.

Madame Crémière always says the funniest things in the world. She adds a g to tambourg, apparently because her pen sputters. On the eve of her daughter’s marriage, she told her at the conclusion of her instructions that a wife should be the busy caterpillar in her house, and should keep a sphinx’s eye upon everything. Goupil is also making a collection of his cousin’s nonsense, a Crémièrana.

“We have had the sorrow of losing our good Abbé Chaperon,” said Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduère this winter, she having tended him during his illness. “The whole district came to his funeral. Nemours is fortunate, for this holy man’s successor is the venerable Curé de Saint-Lange.”

Paris, June-July, 1841.