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.
