Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/73

 slight faults only existed on the surface; he redeemed them by an acquired good nature which a strict moralist would call the indulgence natural to superiority. If he were a little fox-like, he was also considered deeply cunning, without being dishonest. His artfulness was the game of perspicacity. But are not those people called cunning who foresee a result and protect themselves from the traps that are laid for them? The justice of the peace loved whist, a game that the captain and the doctor knew, and which the curé learnt in a very short time.

This little company became an oasis in Minoret’s salon. The Nemours doctor, who was not wanting in education or good breeding, and who honored Minoret as one of the celebrities in medicine, had free access; but his work and fatigue, which obliged him to retire early in order to rise early, prevented him from being as regular as were the doctor’s three friends. The reunion of these five superior persons, the only ones in Nemours who had sufficient general information to understand each other, explains old Minoret’s feeling of repulsion for his heirs; if he had to leave them his fortune, he could hardly admit them into his society. Whether the postmaster, the clerk and the collector understood these distinctions, or whether they were reassured by their uncle’s loyalty and benefaction, to his great satisfaction they ceased visiting him. And so the four old whist and backgammon-players, seven or eight months after the doctor’s installation at Nemours, formed a compact, exclusive society,