verty, hunted into a hole of a place where there's no
way to make a penny of money! He's forced to sit on a stool all day in
the mayor's office to earn--what? Six hundred miserable francs,--a
fine thing, indeed! And here are you, with six hundred and fifty-nine
thousand well invested, and sixty thousand francs' income,--thanks
to me, who never spend more than three thousand a year, everything
included, even my own clothes, yes, everything!--and you never think of
offering him a home here, though there's the second floor empty!
You'd rather the rats and mice ran riot in it than put a human being
there,--and he a lad your father always allowed to be his own son! Do
you want to know what you are? I'll tell you,--a fratricide! And I know
why, too. You see I take an interest in him, and that provokes you.
Stupid as you seem, you have got more spite in you than the spitefullest
of men. Well, yes! I do take an interest in him, and a keen one--"

"But, Flore--"

"'_But, Flore_', indeed! What's that got to do with it? You may go and
find another Flore (if you can!), for I hope this glass of wine may
poison me if I don't get away from your dungeon of a house. I haven't,
God be thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I've been
with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the bargain.
I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that I've
done here,--washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to market,
cooking, taking care of your interests before everything, slaving myself
to death from morning till night,--and this is my reward!"

"But, Flore--"

"Oh, yes, '_Flore_'! find another Flore, if you can, at your time of
life, fifty-one years old, and getting feeble,--for the way your health
is failing is frightful, I know that! and besides, you are none too
amusing--"

"But, Flore--"

"Let me alone!"

She went out, slamming the door with a violence that echoed through the
house, and seemed to shake it to its foundations. Jean-Jacques softly
opened the door and went, still more softly, into the kitchen where she
was muttering to herself.

"But, Flore," said the poor sheep, "this is the first time I have heard
of this wish of yours; how do you know whether I will agree to it or
not?"

"In the first place," she said, "there ought to be a man in the house.
Everybody knows you have ten, fifteen, twenty thousand francs here; if
they came to rob you we should both be murdered. For my pa