This speech has no savor at the present moment. But after reading the
biography of Camille Maupin you can then imagine the old baron
entering the lists against that illustrious woman.



VI

BIOGRAPHY OF CAMILLE MAUPIN

The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen Calyste, its
flower and pride, going, morning or evening, often morning and
evening, to Les Touches, concluded that Mademoiselle Felicite des
Touches was passionately in love with the beautiful youth, and that
she practised upon him all kinds of sorceries. More than one young
girl and wife asked herself by what right an old woman exercised so
absolute an empire over that angel. When Calyste passed along the
Grand Rue to the Croisic gate many a regretful eye was fastened on
him.

It now became necessary to explain the rumors which hovered about the
person whom Calyste was on his way to see. These rumors, swelled by
Breton gossip, envenomed by public ignorance, had reached the rector.
The receiver of taxes, the /juge de paix/, the head of the
Saint-Nazaire custom-house and other lettered persons had not reassured
the abbe by relating to him the strange and fantastic life of the
female writer who concealed herself under the masculine name of Camille
Maupin. She did not as yet eat little children, nor kill her slaves
like Cleopatra, nor throw men into the river as the heroine of the
Tour de Nesle was falsely accused of doing; but to the Abbe Grimont