bby and the bedroom, had been turned into
a study for the doctor. The kitchen, the servant's bedroom, and a small
cellar were situated in a wing of the house, a huge pile built in the
time of the Empire, on the site of an old mansion of which the garden
still remained, though it had been divided among the three ground floor
tenants.

Nothing had been changed in the doctor's house since it was built.
Paint and paper and ceilings were all redolent of the Empire. The grimy
deposits of forty years lay thick on walls and ceilings, on paper and
paint and mirrors and gilding. And yet, this little establishment, in
the depths of the Marais, paid a rent of a thousand francs.

Mme. Poulain, the doctor's mother, aged sixty-seven, was ending her days
in the second bedroom. She worked for a breeches-maker, stitching men's
leggings, breeches, belts, and braces, anything, in fact, that is made
in a way of business which has somewhat fallen off of late years. Her
whole time was spent in keeping her son's house and superintending
the one servant; she never went abroad, and took the air in the little
garden entered through the glass door of the sitting-room. Twenty years
previously, when her husband died, she sold his business to his best
workman, who gave his master's widow work enough to earn a daily wage
of thirty sous. She had made every sacrifice to educate her son. At all
costs, he should occupy a higher station than his father before him;
and now she was proud of her Aesculapius, she believed in him, and
sacrificed everything to him as before. She was happy to take care of
him, to work and put by a little money, and dream of nothing but his
welfare, and love him with an intelligent love of which every mother is
not capable. For instance, Mme. Poulain remembered that she had been a
working girl. She would not injure her son's prospects; he should not be
ashamed by his mother (for the good woman's grammar was something of
the same kind as Mme. Cibot's); and for this reason she kept in the
background, and went to her room of her own accord if any distinguished
patient came to consult the doctor, or if some old schoolfellow or
fellow-student chanced to call. Dr. Poulain had never had occasion to
blush for the mother whom he revered; and this sublime love of hers more
than atoned for a defective education.

The breeches-maker's business sold for about twenty thousand francs, and
the widow invested the money in the Funds in 1820. The