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Putting Into Practice a Science of Existence:

There was this difference between the late Chapeloud and the vicar,--
one was a shrewd and clever egoist, the other a simple-minded and
clumsy one. When the canon went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard he
knew exactly how to judge of his landlady's character. The
confessional had taught him to understand the bitterness that the
sense of being kept outside the social pale puts into the heart of an
old maid; he therefore calculated his own treatment of Mademoiselle
Gamard very wisely. She was then about thirty-eight years old, and
still retained a few pretensions, which, in well-behaved persons of
her condition, change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem.
The canon saw plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he
must pay her invariably the same attentions and be more infallible
than the pope himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of
contact between himself and her except those that politeness demanded,
and those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the
same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular
three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing
Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also
avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends
with whom he spent his evenings. In this way he seldom saw his
landlady except at dinner; but he always came down to that meal a few
minutes in advance of the hour. During this visit of courtesy, as it
may be called, he talked to her, for the twelve years he had lived
under her roof, on nearly the same topics, receiving from her the same
answers. How she had slept, her breakfast, the trivial domestic
events, her looks, her health, the weather, the time the church
services had lasted, the incidents of the mass, the health of such or
such a priest,--these were the subjects of their daily conversation.
During dinner he invariably paid her certain indirect compliments; the
fish had an excellent flavor; the seasoning of a sauce was delicious;
Mademoiselle Gamard's capacities and virtues as mistress of a
household were great. He was sure of flattering the old maid's vanity
by praising the skill with which she made or prepared her preserves
and pickles and pates and other gastronomical inventions. To cap all,
the wily canon never left his landlady's yellow salon after dinner
without remarking that there was no house in Tours where he could get
such good coffee as that he had just imbibed.

Thanks to this thorough understanding of Mademoiselle Gamard's
character, and to the science of existence which he had put in
practice for the last twelve years, no matter of discussion on the
internal arrangements of the household had ever come up between them.
The Abbe Chapeloud had taken note of the spinster's angles,
asperities, and crabbedness, and had so arranged his avoidance of her
that he obtained without the least difficulty all the concessions that
were necessary to the happiness and tranquility of his life. The
result was that Mademoiselle Gamard frequently remarked to her friends
and acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,
extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.

As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing
about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a
satellite in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of
intermediary creature between the individuals of the human species and
those of the canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but
directly before, the place intended for friends but now occupied by a
fat and wheezy pug which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert
completely, and the intermingling of their interests was so obvious
that many persons of her social sphere believed that the Abbe Troubert
had designs on the old maid's property, and was binding her to him
unawares with infinite patience, and really directing her while he
seemed to be obeying without ever letting her percieve in him the
slightest wish on his part to govern her.