maid had already made her own bed, and knew she was down for
sixty thousand francs in the will. Madame could not do without
Cochet, to whom she was accustomed. The woman knew the secrets of dear
mistress's toilet; she alone could put dear mistress to sleep at night
with her gossip, and get her up in the morning with her flattery; to
the day of dear mistress's death the maid never could see the slightest
change in her, and when dear mistress lay in her coffin, she doubtless
thought she had never seen her looking so well.

The annual pickings of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet, their wages
and perquisites, became so large that the most affectionate relative
could not possibly have been more devoted than they to their kindly
mistress. There is really no describing how a swindler cossets his dupe.
A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved daughter as
the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow. What brilliant success
attends the performance of Tartufe behind the closed doors of a home! It
is worth more than friendship. Moliere died too soon; he would otherwise
have shown us the misery of Orgon, wearied by his family, harassed by
his children, regretting the blandishments of Tartufe, and thinking to
himself, "Ah, those were the good times!"

During the last eight years of her life the mistress of Les Aigues
received only thirty thousand francs of the fifty thousand really
yielded by the estate. Gaubertin had reached the same administrative
results as his predecessor, though farm rents and territorial products
were notably increased between 1791 and 1815,--not to speak of Madame's
continual purchases. But Gaubertin's fixed idea of acquiring Les
Aigues at the old lady's death led him to depreciate the value of
the magnificent estate in the matter of its ostensible revenues.
Mademoiselle Cochet, a sharer in the scheme, was also to share the
profits. As the ex-divinity in her declining years received an income of
twenty thousand francs from the Funds called consolidated (how readily
the tongue of politics can jest!), and with difficulty spent the said
sum yearly, she was much surprised at the annual purchases made by her
steward to use up the accumulating revenues, remembering how in former
times she had always drawn them in advance. The result of having few
wants in her old age seemed, to her mind, a proof of the honesty and
uprightness of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet.

"Two pearls!" she said to th