CHAPTER I

For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied Madame

Aubain her servant Felicite.

For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed,

ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the

butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was

by no means an agreeable person.

Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without any money, who died

in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children and a

number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the farm of

Toucques and the farm of Geffosses, the income of which barely

amounted to 5,000 francs; then she left her house in Saint-Melaine,

and moved into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her

ancestors and stood back of the market-place. This house, with its

slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow

street that led to the river. The interior was so unevenly graded that

it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from

the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near

the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white

wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered

with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow

marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a tapestry armchair. The

clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty,

as it was on a lower level than the garden.

On the first floor was Madame's bed-chamber, a large room papered in a

flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the

costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, in which

there were two little cribs, without any mattresses. Next, came the

parlour (always closed), filled with furniture covered with sheets.

Then a hall, which led to the study, where books and papers were piled

on the shelves of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big

black desk. Two panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink

sketches, Gouache landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better

times and vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window

lighted Felicite's room, which looked out upon the meadows.

She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked without

interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the dishes

cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log

under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth with a rosary

in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater obstinacy, and as for

cleanliness, the lustre on her brass sauce-pans was the envy and

despair of other servants. She was most economical, and when she ate

she would gather up crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing

should be wasted of the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was

baked especially for her and lasted three weeks.

Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with

a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings,

and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.

Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she

looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;

erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working

automatically.