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138 talked in the same strain to Elisa, which is almost the same as if he had said it to M. Valenod."

"Ah," exclaimed M. de Rênal, shaking the table and the room with one of the most violent raps ever made by a human fist. "The anonymous printed letter and Valenod's letters are written on the same paper."

"At last," thought Madame de Rênal. She pretended to be overwhelmed at this discovery, and without having the courage to add a single word, went and sat down some way off on the divan at the bottom of the drawing-room.

From this point the battle was won. She had a great deal of trouble in preventing M. de Rênal from going to speak to the supposed author of the anonymous letter. "What, can't you see that making a scene with M. Valenod without sufficient proof would be the most signal mistake? You are envied, Monsieur, and who is responsible? Your talents: your wise management, your tasteful buildings, the dowry which I have brought you, and above all, the substantial legacy which we are entitled to hope for from my good aunt, a legacy, the importance of which is inordinately exaggerated, have made you into the first person in Verrières."

"You are forgetting my birth," said M. de Rênal, smiling a little.

"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.