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.