uget is making a mistake. His father left him a good forty
thousand francs' income, and he ought to marry Mademoiselle Herau."

"The doctor tried to arrange it, but she would not consent; Jean-Jacques
is so stupid--"

"Stupid! why women are very happy with that style of man."

"Is your wife happy?"

Such was the sort of tattle that ran through Issoudun. If people,
following the use and wont of the provinces, began by laughing at this
quasi-marriage, they ended by praising Flore for devoting herself to
the poor fellow. We now see how it was that Flore Brazier obtained the
management of the Rouget household,--from father to son, as young Goddet
had said. It is desirable to sketch the history of that management for
the edification of old bachelors.

Fanchette, the cook, was the only person in Issoudun who thought it
wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and
his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and
took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated
by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,--a child who had been
brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs
a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that
way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she could therefore
live at her ease without the necessity of working, and she quitted the
house nine months after the funeral of her old master, April 15, 1806.
That date may indicate, to a perspicacious observer, the epoch at which
Flore Brazier ceased to be an honest girl.

The Rabouilleuse, clever enough to foresee Fanchette's probable
defection,--there is nothing like the exercise of power for teaching
policy,--was already resolved to do without a servant. For six months
she had studied, without seeming to do so, the culinary operations that
made Fanchette a cordon-bleu worthy of cooking for a doctor. In the
matter of choice living, doctors are on a par with bishops. The doctor
had brought Fanchette's talents to perfection. In the provinces the lack
of occupation and the monotony of existence turn all activity of mind
towards the kitchen. People do not dine as luxuriously in the country
as they do in Paris, but they dine better; the dishes are meditated upon
and studied. In rural regions we often find some Careme in petticoats,
some unrecognized genius able to serve a simple dish of haricot-beans
worthy of the nod with which Rossin