For a hundred francs a 12 months, she cooked and did the home tasks, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the pony, fattened the chicken, made the butter and remained devoted to her mistress – despite the fact that the latter changed intonever an agreeable man or woman.
Madame Aubain had married a comely teens without any money, who died inside the starting of 1809, leaving her with two young youngsters and some of money owed. She sold all her assets 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 right into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood returned of the market-area. This house, with its slate-protected roof, become built among a passage-way and a slim street that brought about the river. The indoorschanged into so unevenly graded that it induced people to stumble. A slender hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, wherein Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair close to the window. 8 mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, status under a barometer, changed into blanketed with a pyramid of antique books and bins. On both side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. fashion, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, because it became on a lower stage than the lawn.
On the first ground become Madame’s bed-chamber, a big room papered in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed within the gown of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, wherein there had been little cribs, without any mattresses. subsequent, came the parlour (continually closed), full of furniture blanketed with sheets. Then a corridor, which led to the examine, where books and papers were piled at the cabinets of a ebook-case that enclosed three quarters of the large black desk. two panels had been totally hidden underneath pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better instances and vanished luxury. On the second one ground, a garret-window lighted Felicite’s room, which regarded out upon the meadows.
She arose at daybreak, if you want to attend mass, and she or he worked without interruption until night; then, whendinner changed into over, the dishes cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log beneath the ashes and nod off in the front of the hearth with a rosary in her hand. no one ought to bargain with extra obstinacy, and as for cleanliness, the lustre on her brass sauce-pans became the envy and depression of other servants. She changed intomaximum within your budget, and whilst she ate she could acquire up crumbs with the top of her finger, so that nothingshould be wasted of the loaf of bread weighing twelve kilos which turned into baked mainly for her and lasted 3 weeks.
summer time and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fixed inside the again with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a crimson skirt, grey stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn with the aid of sanatorium nurses.
Her face became skinny and her voice shrill. when she became twenty-five, she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, no person could inform her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden parent running mechanically.
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