"Prut!" said Annot, her sabots clattering loudly on the brick floor as
she moved more rapidly in her wrath. "Prut! Madame Giraud, indeed! There
was a time, and it was but two years ago, that she was but plain
Mere Giraud, and no better than the rest of us; and it seems to me,
neighbors, that it is not well to show pride because one has the luck to
be favored by fortune. Where, forsooth, would our 'Madame' Giraud
stand if luck had not given her a daughter pretty enough to win a rich
husband?"
"True, indeed!" echoed two of the gossips who were her admiring
listeners. "True, beyond doubt. Where, indeed?"
But the third, a comely, fresh-skinned matron, who leaned against the
door, and knitted a stout gray stocking with fast-clashing needles, did
not acquiesce so readily.
"Well, well, neighbors," she said, "for my part, I do not see so much to
complain of. Mère Giraud--she is still Mère Giraud to me--is as honest
and kindly a soul as ever. It is not she who has called herself Madame
Giraud; it is others who are foolish enough to fancy that good luck must
change one's old ways. If she had had the wish to be a grand personage,
would she not have left our village before this and have joined Madame
Legrand in Paris. On the contrary, however, she remains in her cottage,
and is as good a neighbor as ever, even though she is fond of talking of
the carriages and jewels of Madame Legrand and her establishment on the
Boulevard Malesherbes. In fact, I ask you, who of us would not rejoice
also to be the mother of a daughter whose fortune had been so good?"
"That also is true," commented the amiable couple, nodding their
white-capped heads with a sagacious air. "True, without doubt."