She was excessively afraid of Goupil, who caught up and retailed her "slapsus-linquies" as she called them.

One day Madame Dionis chanced to ask what "Eau" she thought best for the teeth.
"Try opium," she replied.
Nearly all the collateral heirs of old Doctor Minoret were now assembled in the square; the importance of the event which brought them was so generally felt that even groups of peasants, armed with their scarlet umbrellas and dressed in those brilliant colors which make them so picturesque on Sundays and fete-days, stood by, with their eyes fixed on the frightened heirs.

In all little towns which are midway between large villages and cities those who do not go to mass stand about in the square or market-place.

Business is talked over.

In Nemours the hour of church service was a weekly exchange, to which the owners of property scattered over a radius of some miles resorted.
"Well, how would you have prevented it ?" said the post master to Goupil in reply to his remark.
"I should have made myself as important to him as the air he breathes.
But from the very first you failed to get hold of him.