Well, the height of art in a man of la Peyrade's force was to oblige others to say of him later: "Everybody would have been taken in by him." Now, in the salon Thuillier, he noted a dawning opposition; he perceived in Colleville the somewhat clear-sighted and criticising nature of an artist who has missed his vocation.

The barrister felt himself displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances not necessary to here report) considered himself justified in believing in the science of anagrams.

None of this anagrams had ever failed.

The clerks in the government office had laughed at him when, demanding an anagram on the name of the poor helpless Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard, he had produced, "J'amassai une si grande fortune"; and the event had justified him after the lapse of ten years! Theodose, on several occasions, had made advances to the jovial secretary of the mayor's office, and had felt himself rebuffed by a coldness which was not natural in so sociable a man.

When the game of bouillotte came to an end, Colleville seized the moment to draw Thuillier into the recess of a window and say to him:-- "You are letting that lawyer get too much foothold in your house; he kept the ball in his own hands all the evening." "Thank you, my friend; forewarned is forearmed," replied Thuillier, inwardly scoffing at Colleville.
Theodose, who was talking at the moment to Madame Colleville, had his eye on the two men, and, with the same prescience by which women know when and how they are spoken of, he perceived that Colleville was trying to injure him in the mind of the weak and silly Thuillier.