To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma

took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet

face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in

the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before

coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a

lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not

to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,

Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone

in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.

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Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that

showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with

three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and

her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell

over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,

pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she

dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,

and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She

longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same

time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on

farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid

spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined

basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he

found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed

woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say

whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous

her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of

arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on

her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the

servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last

mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the

watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two

large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a

silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements

the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the

senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust

sanding all along the narrow path of his life.




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