Jean-Jacques Rouget did not mourn his father, though Flore Brazier did.
The old doctor had made his son extremely unhappy, especially since
he came of age, which happened in 1791; but he had given the little
peasant-girl the material pleasures which are the ideal of happiness to
country-folk. When Fanchette asked Flore, after the funeral, “Well, what
is to become of you, now that monsieur is dead?” Jean-Jacques’s eyes
lighted up, and for the first time in his life his dull face grew
animated, showed feeling, and seemed to brighten under the rays of a
thought.
“Leave the room,” he said to Fanchette, who was clearing the table.
At seventeen, Flore retained that delicacy of feature and form, that
distinction of beauty which attracted the doctor, and which women of the
world know how to preserve, though it fades among the peasant-girls
like the flowers of the field. Nevertheless, the tendency to embonpoint,
which handsome countrywomen develop when they no longer live a life
of toil and hardship in the fields and in the sunshine, was already
noticeable about her. Her bust had developed. The plump white shoulders
were modelled on rich lines that harmoniously blended with those of the
throat, already showing a few folds of flesh. But the outline of the
face was still faultless, and the chin delicate.
“Flore,” said Jean-Jacques, in a trembling voice, “you feel at home in
this house?”
“Yes, Monsieur Jean.”
As the heir was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue
stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave,
and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father’s benevolence might
have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity
of mind, looked at her future master and waited for a time, expecting
Jean-Jacques to go on with what he was saying; but she finally left
him without knowing what to think of such obstinate silence. Whatever
teaching the Rabouilleuse may have received from the doctor, it was many
a long day before she finally understood the character of Jean-Jacques,
whose history we now present in a few words.
At the death of his father, Jacques, then thirty-seven, was as timid and
submissive to paternal discipline as a child of twelve years old. That
timidity ought to explain his childhood, youth, and after-life to those
who are reluctant to admit the existence of such characters, or such
facts as this history relates,--though proofs of them are, alas, common
everywhere, even among princes; for Sophie Dawes was taken by the last
of the Condes under worse circumstances than the Rabouilleuse. There are
two species of timidity,--the timidity of the mind, and the timidity
of the nerves; a physical timidity, and a moral timidity. The one is
independent of the other. The body may fear and tremble, while the mind
is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral
eccentricities. When the two are united in one man, that man will be a
cipher all his life; such double-sided timidity makes him what we call
“an imbecile.” Often fine suppressed qualities are hidden within that
imbecile. To this double infirmity we may, perhaps, owe the lives of
certain monks who lived in ecstasy; for this unfortunate moral and
physical disposition is produced quite as much by the perfection of the
soul and of the organs, as by defects which are still unstudied.
The timidity of Jean-Jacques came from a certain torpor of his
faculties, which a great teacher or a great surgeon, like Despleins,
would have roused. In him, as in the cretins, the sense of love
had inherited a strength and vigor which were lacking to his mental
qualities, though he had mind enough to guide him in ordinary affairs.
The violence of passion, stripped of the ideal in which most young men
expend it, only increased his timidity. He had never brought himself to
court, as the saying is, any woman in Issoudun. Certainly no young girl
or matron would make advances to a young man of mean stature, awkward
and shame-faced in attitude; whose vulgar face, with its flattened
features and pallid skin, making him look old before his time, was
rendered still more hideous by a pair of large and prominent light-green
eyes. The presence of a woman stultified the poor fellow, who was driven
by passion on the one hand as violently as the lack of ideas, resulting
from his education, held him back on the other. Paralyzed between these
opposing forces, he had not a word to say, and feared to be spoken to,
so much did he dread the obligation of replying. Desire, which usually
sets free the tongue, only petrified his powers of speech. Thus it
happened that Jean-Jacques Rouget was solitary and sought solitude
because there alone he was at his ease.
The doctor had seen, too late for remedy, the havoc wrought in his son’s
life by a temperament and a character of this kind. He would have been
glad to get him married; but to do that, he must deliver him over to
an influence that was certain to become tyrannical, and the doctor
hesitated. Was it not practically giving the whole management of the
property into the hands of a stranger, some unknown girl? The doctor
knew how difficult it was to gain true indications of the moral
character of a woman from any study of a young girl. So, while he
continued to search for a daughter-in-law whose sentiments and education
offered some guarantees for the future, he endeavored to push his
son into the ways of avarice; meaning to give the poor fool a sort of
instinct that might eventually take the place of intelligence.
He trained him, in the first place, to mechanical habits of life; and
instilled into him fixed ideas as to the investment of his revenues: and
he spared him the chief difficulties of the management of a fortune,
by leaving his estates all in good order, and leased for long periods.
Nevertheless, a fact which was destined to be of paramount importance in
the life of the poor creature escaped the notice of the wily old doctor.
Timidity is a good deal like dissimulation, and is equally secretive.
Jean-Jacques was passionately in love with the Rabouilleuse. Nothing, of
course, could be more natural. Flore was the only woman who lived in the
bachelor’s presence, the only one he could see at his ease; and at all
hours he secretly contemplated her and watched her. To him, she was the
light of his paternal home; she gave him, unknown to herself, the only
pleasures that brightened his youth. Far from being jealous of his
father, he rejoiced in the education the old man was giving to Flore:
would it not make her all he wanted, a woman easy to win, and to whom,
therefore, he need pay no court? The passion, observe, which is able
to reflect, gives even to ninnies, fools, and imbeciles a species of
intelligence, especially in youth. In the lowest human creature we find
an animal instinct whose persistency resembles thought.
The next day, Flore, who had been reflecting on her master’s silence,
waited in expectation of some momentous communication; but although he
kept near her, and looked at her on the sly with passionate glances,
Jean-Jacques still found nothing to say. At last, when the dessert was
on the table, he recommenced the scene of the night before.
“You like your life here?” he said to Flore.
“Yes, Monsieur Jean.”
“Well, stay here then.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Jean.”
This strange situation lasted three weeks. One night, when no sound
broke the stillness of the house, Flore, who chanced to wake up,
heard the regular breathing of human lungs outside her door, and was
frightened to discover Jean-Jacques, crouched like a dog on the landing.
“He loves me,” she thought; “but he will get the rheumatism if he keeps
up that sort of thing.”
The next day Flore looked at her master with a certain expression. This
mute almost instinctive love had touched her; she no longer thought
the poor ninny so ugly, though his forehead was crowned with pimples
resembling ulcers, the signs of a vitiated blood.
“You don’t want to go back and live in the fields, do you?” said
Jean-Jacques when they were alone.
“Why do you ask me that?” she said, looking at him.
“To know--” replied Rouget, turning the color of a boiled lobster.
“Do you wish to send me back?” she asked.
“No, mademoiselle.”
“Well, what is it you want to know? You have some reason--”
“Yes, I want to know--”
“What?” said Flore.
“You won’t tell me?” exclaimed Rouget.
“Yes I will, on my honor--”
“Ah! that’s it,” returned Rouget, with a frightened air. “Are you an
honest girl?”
“I’ll take my oath--”
“Are you, truly?”
“Don’t you hear me tell you so?”
“Come; are you the same as you were when your uncle brought you here
barefooted?”
“A fine question, faith!” cried Flore, blushing.
The heir lowered his head and did not raise it again. Flore, amazed at
such an encouraging sign from a man who had been overcome by a fear of
that nature, left the room.
Three days later, at the same hour (for both seemed to regard the
dessert as a field of battle), Flore spoke first, and said to her
master,--
“Have you anything against me?”
“No, mademoiselle,” he answered, “No--” (a pause) “On the contrary.”
“You seemed annoyed the other day to hear I was an honest girl.”
“No, I only wished to know--” (a pause) “But you would not tell me--”
“On my word!” she said, “I will tell you the whole truth.”
“The whole truth about--my father?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“Your father,” she said, looking full into her master’s eye, “was a
worthy man--he liked a joke--What of that?--there was nothing in it.
But, poor dear man, it wasn’t the will that was wanting. The truth is,
he had some spite against you, I don’t know what, and he meant--oh! he
meant you harm. Sometimes he made me laugh; but there! what of that?”
“Well, Flore,” said the heir, taking her hand, “as my father was nothing
to you--”
“What did you suppose he was to me?” she cried, as if offended by some
unworthy suspicion.
“Well, but just listen--”
“He was my benefactor, that was all. Ah! he would have liked to make me
his wife, but--”
“But,” said Rouget, taking the hand which Flore had snatched away from
him, “if he was nothing to you you can stay here with me, can’t you?”
“If you wish it,” she said, dropping her eyes.
“No, no! if you wish it, you!” exclaimed Rouget. “Yes, you shall
be--mistress here. All that is here shall be yours; you shall take care
of my property, it is almost yours now--for I love you; I have always
loved you since the day you came and stood there--there!--with bare
feet.”
Flore made no answer. When the silence became embarrassing, Jean-Jacques
had recourse to a terrible argument.
“Come,” he said, with visible warmth, “wouldn’t it be better than
returning to the fields?”
“As you will, Monsieur Jean,” she answered.
Nevertheless, in spite of her “as you will,” Jean-Jacques got no
further. Men of his nature want certainty. The effort that they make in
avowing their love is so great, and costs them so much, that they feel
unable to go on with it. This accounts for their attachment to the first
woman who accepts them. We can only guess at circumstances by results.
Ten months after the death of his father, Jean-Jacques changed
completely; his leaden face cleared, and his whole countenance breathed
happiness. Flore exacted that he should take minute care of his person,
and her own vanity was gratified in seeing him well-dressed; she always
stood on the sill of the door, and watched him starting for a walk,
until she could see him no longer. The whole town noticed these changes,
which had made a new man of the bachelor.
“Have you heard the news?” people said to each other in Issoudun.
“What is it?”
“Jean-Jacques inherits everything from his father, even the
Rabouilleuse.”
“Don’t you suppose the old doctor was wicked enough to provide a ruler
for his son?”
“Rouget has got a treasure, that’s certain,” said everybody.
“She’s a sly one! She is very handsome, and she will make him marry
her.”
“What luck that girl has had, to be sure!”
“The luck that only comes to pretty girls.”
“Ah, bah! do you believe that? look at my uncle Borniche-Herau. You have
heard of Mademoiselle Ganivet? she was as ugly as seven capital sins,
but for all that, she got three thousand francs a year out of him.”
“Yes, but that was in 1778.”
“Still, Rouget is making a mistake. His father left him a good forty
thousand francs’ income, and he ought to marry Mademoiselle Herau.”
“The doctor tried to arrange it, but she would not consent; Jean-Jacques
is so stupid--”
“Stupid! why women are very happy with that style of man.”
“Is your wife happy?”
Such was the sort of tattle that ran through Issoudun. If people,
following the use and wont of the provinces, began by laughing at this
quasi-marriage, they ended by praising Flore for devoting herself to
the poor fellow. We now see how it was that Flore Brazier obtained the
management of the Rouget household,--from father to son, as young Goddet
had said. It is desirable to sketch the history of that management for
the edification of old bachelors.
Fanchette, the cook, was the only person in Issoudun who thought it
wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and
his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and
took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated
by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,--a child who had been
brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs
a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that
way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she could therefore
live at her ease without the necessity of working, and she quitted the
house nine months after the funeral of her old master, April 15, 1806.
That date may indicate, to a perspicacious observer, the epoch at which
Flore Brazier ceased to be an honest girl.
The Rabouilleuse, clever enough to foresee Fanchette’s probable
defection,--there is nothing like the exercise of power for teaching
policy,--was already resolved to do without a servant. For six months
she had studied, without seeming to do so, the culinary operations that
made Fanchette a cordon-bleu worthy of cooking for a doctor. In the
matter of choice living, doctors are on a par with bishops. The doctor
had brought Fanchette’s talents to perfection. In the provinces the lack
of occupation and the monotony of existence turn all activity of mind
towards the kitchen. People do not dine as luxuriously in the country
as they do in Paris, but they dine better; the dishes are meditated upon
and studied. In rural regions we often find some Careme in petticoats,
some unrecognized genius able to serve a simple dish of haricot-beans
worthy of the nod with which Rossini welcomed a perfectly-rendered
measure.
When studying for his degree in Paris, the doctor had followed a
course of chemistry under Rouelle, and had gathered some ideas which he
afterwards put to use in the chemistry of cooking. His memory is famous
in Issoudun for certain improvements little known outside of Berry. It
was he who discovered that an omelette is far more delicate when the
whites and the yolks are not beaten together with the violence which
cooks usually put into the operation. He considered that the whites
should be beaten to a froth and the yolks gently added by degrees;
moreover a frying-pan should never be used, but a “cagnard” of porcelain
or earthenware. The “cagnard” is a species of thick dish standing on
four feet, so that when it is placed on the stove the air circulates
underneath and prevents the fire from cracking it. In Touraine the
“cagnard” is called a “cauquemarre.” Rabelais, I think, speaks of a
“cauquemarre” for cooking cockatrice eggs, thus proving the antiquity of
the utensil. The doctor had also found a way to prevent the tartness
of browned butter; but his secret, which unluckily he kept to his own
kitchen, has been lost.
Flore, a born fryer and roaster, two qualities that can never be
acquired by observation nor yet by labor, soon surpassed Fanchette. In
making herself a cordon-bleu she was thinking of Jean-Jacques’s comfort;
though she was, it must be owned, tolerably dainty. Incapable, like all
persons without education, of doing anything with her brains, she spent
her activity upon household matters. She rubbed up the furniture till
it shone, and kept everything about the house in a state of cleanliness
worthy of Holland. She managed the avalanches of soiled linen and the
floods of water that go by the name of “the wash,” which was done,
according to provincial usage, three times a year. She kept a
housewifely eye to the linen, and mended it carefully. Then, desirous
of learning little by little the secret of the family property, she
acquired the very limited business knowledge which Rouget possessed,
and increased it by conversations with the notary of the late doctor,
Monsieur Heron. Thus instructed, she gave excellent advice to her
little Jean-Jacques. Sure of being always mistress, she was as eager and
solicitous about the old bachelor’s interests as if they had been her
own. She was not obliged to guard against the exactions of her uncle,
for two months before the doctor’s death Brazier died of a fall as he
was leaving a wine-shop, where, since his rise in fortune, he spent most
of his time. Flore had also lost her father; thus she served her master
with all the affection which an orphan, thankful to make herself a home
and a settlement in life, would naturally feel.
This period of his life was paradise to poor Jean-Jacques, who now
acquired the gentle habits of an animal, trained into a sort of monastic
regularity. He slept late. Flore, who was up at daybreak attending to
her housekeeping, woke him so that he should find his breakfast ready as
soon as he had finished dressing. After breakfast, about eleven o’clock,
Jean-Jacques went to walk; talked with the people he met, and came home
at three in the afternoon to read the papers,--those of the department,
and a journal from Paris which he received three days after publication,
well greased by the thirty hands through which it came, browned by the
snuffy noses that had pored over it, and soiled by the various tables
on which it had lain. The old bachelor thus got through the day until
it was time for dinner; over that meal he spent as much time as it was
possible to give to it. Flore told him the news of the town, repeating
the cackle that was current, which she had carefully picked up. Towards
eight o’clock the lights were put out. Going to bed early is a saving
of fire and candles very commonly practised in the provinces, which
contributes no doubt to the empty-mindedness of the inhabitants. Too
much sleep dulls and weakens the brain.
Such was the life of these two persons during a period of nine years,
the great events of which were a few journeys to Bourges, Vierzon,
Chateauroux, or somewhat further, if the notaries of those towns and
Monsieur Heron had no investments ready for acceptance. Rouget lent his
money at five per cent on a first mortgage, with release of the wife’s
rights in case the owner was married. He never lent more than a third of
the value of the property, and required notes payable to his order for
an additional interest of two and a half per cent spread over the whole
duration of the loan. Such were the rules his father had told him to
follow. Usury, that clog upon the ambition of the peasantry, is the
destroyer of country regions. This levy of seven and a half per cent
seemed, therefore, so reasonable to the borrowers that Jean-Jacques
Rouget had his choice of investments; and the notaries of the different
towns, who got a fine commission for themselves from clients for whom
they obtained money on such good terms, gave due notice to the old
bachelor.
During these nine years Flore obtained in the long run, insensibly and
without aiming for it, an absolute control over her master. From the
first, she treated him very familiarly; then, without failing him in
proper respect, she so far surpassed him in superiority of mind and
force of character that he became in fact the servant of his servant.
Elderly child that he was, he met this mastery half-way by letting Flore
take such care of him that she treated him more as a mother would a
son; and he himself ended by clinging to her with the feeling of a child
dependent on a mother’s protection. But there were other ties between
them not less tightly knotted. In the first place, Flore kept the
house and managed all its business. Jean-Jacques left everything to the
crab-girl so completely that life without her would have seemed to him
not only difficult, but impossible. In every way, this woman had become
the one need of his existence; she indulged all his fancies, for she
knew them well. He loved to see her bright face always smiling at
him,--the only face that had ever smiled upon him, the only one to which
he could look for a smile. This happiness, a purely material happiness,
expressed in the homely words which come readiest to the tongue in a
Berrichon household, and visible on the fine countenance of the young
woman, was like a reflection of his own inward content. The state into
which Jean-Jacques was thrown when Flore’s brightness was clouded over
by some passing annoyance revealed to the girl her power over him, and,
to make sure of it, she sometimes liked to use it. Using such power
means, with women of her class, abusing it. The Rabouilleuse, no doubt,
made her master play some of those scenes buried in the mysteries of
private life, of which Otway gives a specimen in the tragedy of “Venice
Preserved,” where the scene between the senator and Aquilina is the
realization of the magnificently horrible. Flore felt so secure of her
power that, unfortunately for her, and for the bachelor himself, it did
not occur to her to make him marry her.
Towards the close of 1815, Flore, who was then twenty-seven, had reached
the perfect development of her beauty. Plump and fresh, and white as
a Norman countrywoman, she was the ideal of what our ancestors used to
call “a buxom housewife.” Her beauty, always that of a handsome
barmaid, though higher in type and better kept, gave her a likeness
to Mademoiselle George in her palmy days, setting aside the latter’s
imperial dignity. Flore had the dazzling white round arms, the ample
modelling, the satiny textures of the skin, the alluring though less
rigidly correct outlines of the great actress. Her expression was one
of sweetness and tenderness; but her glance commanded less respect than
that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the
days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the
Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first
sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,--admirable
description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive
the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity,
could represent in no other way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained,
and Max accepted his conquest.
Thus, at twenty-eight years of age, the Rabouilleuse felt for the first
time a true love, an idolatrous love, the love which includes all ways
of loving,--that of Gulnare and that of Medora. As soon as the penniless
officer found out the respective situations of Flore and Jean-Jacques
Rouget, he saw something more desirable than an “amourette” in an
intimacy with the Rabouilleuse. He asked nothing better for his future
prosperity than to take up his abode at the Rouget’s, recognizing
perfectly the feeble nature of the old bachelor. Flore’s passion
necessarily affected the life and household affairs of her master. For
a month the old man, now grown excessively timid, saw the laughing and
kindly face of his mistress change to something terrible and gloomy
and sullen. He was made to endure flashes of angry temper purposely
displayed, precisely like a married man whose wife is meditating an
infidelity. When, after some cruel rebuff, he nerved himself to ask
Flore the reason of the change, her eyes were so full of hatred, and
her voice so aggressive and contemptuous, that the poor creature quailed
under them.
“Good heavens!” she cried; “you have neither heart nor soul! Here’s
sixteen years that I have spent my youth in this house, and I have only
just found out that you have got a stone there (striking her breast).
For two months you have seen before your eyes that brave captain, a
victim of the Bourbons, who was cut out for a general, and is down in
the depths of poverty, hunted into a hole of a place where there’s no
way to make a penny of money! He’s forced to sit on a stool all day in
the mayor’s office to earn--what? Six hundred miserable francs,--a
fine thing, indeed! And here are you, with six hundred and fifty-nine
thousand well invested, and sixty thousand francs’ income,--thanks
to me, who never spend more than three thousand a year, everything
included, even my own clothes, yes, everything!--and you never think of
offering him a home here, though there’s the second floor empty!
You’d rather the rats and mice ran riot in it than put a human being
there,--and he a lad your father always allowed to be his own son! Do
you want to know what you are? I’ll tell you,--a fratricide! And I know
why, too. You see I take an interest in him, and that provokes you.
Stupid as you seem, you have got more spite in you than the spitefullest
of men. Well, yes! I do take an interest in him, and a keen one--”
“But, Flore--”
“‘_But, Flore_’, indeed! What’s that got to do with it? You may go and
find another Flore (if you can!), for I hope this glass of wine may
poison me if I don’t get away from your dungeon of a house. I haven’t,
God be thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I’ve been
with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the bargain.
I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that I’ve
done here,--washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to market,
cooking, taking care of your interests before everything, slaving myself
to death from morning till night,--and this is my reward!”
“But, Flore--”
“Oh, yes, ‘_Flore_’! find another Flore, if you can, at your time of
life, fifty-one years old, and getting feeble,--for the way your health
is failing is frightful, I know that! and besides, you are none too
amusing--”
“But, Flore--”
“Let me alone!”
She went out, slamming the door with a violence that echoed through the
house, and seemed to shake it to its foundations. Jean-Jacques softly
opened the door and went, still more softly, into the kitchen where she
was muttering to herself.
“But, Flore,” said the poor sheep, “this is the first time I have heard
of this wish of yours; how do you know whether I will agree to it or
not?”
“In the first place,” she said, “there ought to be a man in the house.
Everybody knows you have ten, fifteen, twenty thousand francs here; if
they came to rob you we should both be murdered. For my part, I don’t
care to wake up some fine morning chopped in quarters, as happened to
that poor servant-girl who was silly enough to defend her master. Well!
if the robbers knew there was a man in the house as brave as Caesar
and who wasn’t born yesterday,--for Max could swallow three burglars as
quick as a flash,--well, then I should sleep easy. People may tell you a
lot of stuff,--that I love him, that I adore him,--and some say this and
some say that! Do you know what you ought to say? You ought to answer
that you know it; that your father told you on his deathbed to take care
of his poor Max. That will stop people’s tongues; for every stone in
Issoudun can tell you he paid Max’s schooling--and so! Here’s nine years
that I have eaten your bread--”
“Flore,--Flore!”
“--and many a one in this town has paid court to me, I can tell you!
Gold chains here, and watches there,--what don’t they offer me? ‘My
little Flore,’ they say, ‘why won’t you leave that old fool of a
Rouget,’--for that’s what they call you. ‘I leave him!’ I always answer,
‘a poor innocent like that? I think I see myself! what would become of
him? No, no, where the kid is tethered, let her browse--’”
“Yes, Flore; I’ve none but you in this world, and you make me happy.
If it will give you pleasure, my dear, well, we will have Maxence Gilet
here; he can eat with us--”
“Heavens! I should hope so!”
“There, there! don’t get angry--”
“Enough for one is enough for two,” she answered laughing. “I’ll tell
you what you can do, my lamb, if you really mean to be kind; you must go
and walk up and down near the Mayor’s office at four o’clock, and manage
to meet Monsieur Gilet and invite him to dinner. If he makes excuses,
tell him it will give me pleasure; he is too polite to refuse. And after
dinner, at dessert, if he tells you about his misfortunes, and the hulks
and so forth--for you can easily get him to talk about all that--then
you can make him the offer to come and live here. If he makes any
objection, never mind, I shall know how to settle it.”
Walking slowly along the boulevard Baron, the old celibate reflected,
as much as he had the mind to reflect, over this incident. If he were
to part from Flore (the mere thought confused him) where could he find
another woman? Should he marry? At his age he should be married for his
money, and a legitimate wife would use him far more cruelly than Flore.
Besides, the thought of being deprived of her tenderness, even if it
were a mere pretence, caused him horrible anguish. He was therefore as
polite to Captain Gilet as he knew how to be. The invitation was given,
as Flore had requested, before witnesses, to guard the hero’s honor from
all suspicion.
A reconciliation took place between Flore and her master; but from that
day forth Jean-Jacques noticed many a trifle that betokened a total
change in his mistress’s affections. For two or three weeks Flore
Brazier complained to the tradespeople in the markets, and to the women
with whom she gossiped, about Monsieur Rouget’s tyranny,--how he had
taken it into his head to invite his self-styled natural brother to live
with him. No one, however, was taken in by this comedy; and Flore was
looked upon as a wonderfully clever and artful creature. Old Rouget
really found himself very comfortable after Max became the master of
his house; for he thus gained a companion who paid him many attentions,
without, however, showing any servility. Gilet talked, discussed
politics, and sometimes went to walk with Rouget. After Max was fairly
installed, Flore did not choose to do the cooking; she said it spoiled
her hands. At the request of the grand master of the Order of the
Knights of Idleness, Mere Cognette produced one of her relatives, an
old maid whose master, a curate, had lately died without leaving her
anything,--an excellent cook, withal,--who declared she would devote
herself for life or death to Max and Flore. In the name of the two
powers, Mere Cognette promised her an annuity of three hundred francs a
year at the end of ten years, if she served them loyally, honestly,
and discreetly. The Vedie, as she was called, was noticeable for a face
deeply pitted by the small-pox, and correspondingly ugly.
After the new cook had entered upon her duties, the Rabouilleuse took
the title of Madame Brazier. She wore corsets; she had silk, or
handsome woollen and cotton dresses, according to the season, expensive
neckerchiefs, embroidered caps and collars, lace ruffles at her throat,
boots instead of shoes, and, altogether, adopted a richness and elegance
of apparel which renewed the youthfulness of her appearance. She was
like a rough diamond, that needed cutting and mounting by a jeweller to
bring out its full value. Her desire was to do honor to Max. At the end
of the first year, in 1817, she brought a horse, styled English, from
Bourges, for the poor cavalry captain, who was weary of going afoot. Max
had picked up in the purlieus of Issoudun an old lancer of the Imperial
Guard, a Pole named Kouski, now very poor, who asked nothing better than
to quarter himself in Monsieur Rouget’s house as the captain’s servant.
Max was Kouski’s idol, especially after the duel with the three
royalists. So, from 1817, the household of the old bachelor was made up
of five persons, three of whom were masters, and the expenses advanced
to about eight thousand francs a year.