Her beauty, always that of a handsome
barmaid, though higher in type and better kept, gave her a likeness
to Mademoiselle George in her palmy days, setting aside the latter's
imperial dignity. Flore had the dazzling white round arms, the ample
modelling, the satiny textures of the skin, the alluring though less
rigidly correct outlines of the great actress. Her expression was one
of sweetness and tenderness; but her glance commanded less respect than
that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the
days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the
Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first
sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,--admirable
description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive
the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity,
could represent in no other way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained,
and Max accepted his conquest.

Thus, at twenty-eight years of age, the Rabouilleuse felt for the first
time a true love, an idolatrous love, the love which includes all ways
of loving,--that of Gulnare and that of Medora. As soon as the penniless
officer found out the respective situations of Flore and Jean-Jacques
Rouget, he saw something more desirable than an "amourette" in an
intimacy with the Rabouilleuse. He asked nothing better for his future
prosperity than to take up his abode at the Rouget's, recognizing
perfectly the feeble nature of the old bachelor. Flore's passion
necessarily affected the life and household affairs of her master. For
a month the old man, now grown excessively timid, saw the laughing and
kindly face of his mistress change to something terrible and gloomy
and sullen. He was made to endure flashes of angry temper purposely
displayed, precisely like a married man whose wife is meditating an
infidelity. When, after some cruel rebuff, he nerved himself to ask
Flore the reason of the change, her eyes were so full of hatred, and
her voice so aggressive and contemptuous, that the poor creature quailed
under them.

"Good heavens!" she cried; "you have neither heart nor soul! Here's
sixteen years that I have spent my youth in this house, and I have only
just found out that you have got a stone there (striking her breast).
For two months you have seen before your eyes that brave captain, a
victim of the Bourbons, who was cut out for a general, and is down in
the depths of po