a panic terror such as the worst of scoundrels might
feel at sight of a policeman, an agony caused solely by a doubt as
to Mme. de Marville's probable reception of him. That grain of sand,
grating continually on the fibres of his heart, so far from losing its
angles, grew more and more jagged, and the family in the Rue de Hanovre
always sharpened the edges. Indeed, their unceremonious treatment and
Pons' depreciation in value among them had affected the servants; and
while they did not exactly fail in respect, they looked on the poor
relation as a kind of beggar.

Pons' arch-enemy in the house was the ladies'-maid, a thin and wizened
spinster, Madeleine Vivet by name. This Madeleine, in spite of, nay,
perhaps on the strength of, a pimpled complexion and a viper-like length
of spine, had made up her mind that some day she would be Mme. Pons.
But in vain she dangled twenty thousand francs of savings before the
old bachelor's eyes; Pons had declined happiness accompanied by so many
pimples. From that time forth the Dido of the ante-chamber, who fain had
called her master and mistress "cousin," wreaked her spite in petty ways
upon the poor musician. She heard him on the stairs, and cried audibly,
"Oh! here comes the sponger!" She stinted him of wine when she waited at
dinner in the footman's absence; she filled the water-glass to the brim,
to give him the difficult task of lifting it without spilling a drop;
or she would pass the old man over altogether, till the mistress of the
house would remind her (and in what a tone!--it brought the color to the
poor cousin's face); or she would spill the gravy over his clothes. In
short, she waged petty war after the manner of a petty nature, knowing
that she could annoy an unfortunate superior with impunity.

Madeleine Vivet was Mme. de Marville's maid and housekeeper. She had
lived with M. and Mme. Camusot de Marville since their marriage; she had
shared the early struggles in the provinces when M. Camusot was a judge
at Alencon; she had helped them to exist when M. Camusot, President
of the Tribunal of Mantes, came to Paris, in 1828, to be an examining
magistrate. She was, therefore, too much one of the family not to wish,
for reasons of her own, to revenge herself upon them. Beneath her desire
to pay a trick upon her haughty and ambitious mistress, and to call her
master her cousin, there surely lurked a long-stifled hatred, built up
like an avalanche, upon the pebble of some past