Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grew
so angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded to
his ninety years, and said, "I hope that I shall not see ninety-three
twice." On these occasions, he hinted to people that he meant to live to
be a hundred.

CHAPTER V--BASQUE AND NICOLETTE

He had theories. Here is one of them: "When a man is passionately fond
of women, and when he has himself a wife for whom he cares but little,
who is homely, cross, legitimate, with plenty of rights, perched on the
code, and jealous at need, there is but one way of extricating himself
from the quandry and of procuring peace, and that is to let his wife
control the purse-strings. This abdication sets him free. Then his
wife busies herself, grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her
fingers covered with verdigris in the process, undertakes the education
of half-share tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers,
presides over notaries, harangues scriveners, visits limbs of the law,
follows lawsuits, draws up leases, dictates contracts, feels herself the
sovereign, sells, buys, regulates, promises and compromises, binds fast
and annuls, yields, concedes and retrocedes, arranges, disarranges,
hoards, lavishes; she commits follies, a supreme and personal delight,
and that consoles her. While her husband disdains her, she has the
satisfaction of ruining her husband." This theory M. Gillenormand had
himself applied, and it had become his history. His wife--the second
one--had administered his fortune in such a manner that, one fine day,
when M. Gillenormand found himself a widower, there remained to him just
sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole of it in an annuity
of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which would expire with
him. He had not hesitated on this point, not being anxious to leave
a property behind him. Besides, he had noticed that patrimonies are
subject to adventures, and, for instance, become national property; he
had been present at the avatars of consolidated three per cents, and he
had no great faith in the Great Book of the Public Debt. "All that's
the Rue Quincampois!" he said. His house in the Rue Filles-du-Clavaire
belonged to him, as we have already stated. He had two servants, "a male
and a female." When a servant entered his establishment, M. Gillenormand
re-baptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province:
Nimois, Comtois, Poitevin, P