fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a
lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame
was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing-gown, that showed
between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three
gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her
small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over
her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case,
pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt
of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on
their watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her
mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory
_necessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood
these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the
pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a
golden dust sanding a