d; we may
even believe that had she imported a caleche from Paris they would have
gossiped more about that than about her various matrimonial failures.
The most brilliant equipage would, after all, have only taken her, like
the old carriole, to Prebaudet. Now the provinces, which look solely to
results, care little about the beauty or elegance of the means, provided
they are efficient.

CHAPTER V. AN OLD MAID'S HOUSEHOLD

To complete the picture of the internal habits and ways of this house,
it is necessary to group around Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe
de Sponde Jacquelin, Josette, and Mariette, the cook, who employed
themselves in providing for the comfort of uncle and niece.

Jacquelin, a man of forty, short, fat, ruddy, and brown, with a
face like a Breton sailor, had been in the service of the house for
twenty-two years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened,
blacked the abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the
carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in
the antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He
was in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would
have dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their
wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for mademoiselle's
own marriage, as the Jews are waiting for the Messiah. Josette, born
between Alencon and Mortagne, was short and plump; her face, which
looked like a dirty apricot, was not wanting in sense and character;
it was said that she ruled her mistress. Josette and Jacquelin, sure of
results, endeavored to hide an inward satisfaction which allows it to be
supposed that, as lovers, they had discounted the future. Mariette, the
cook, who had been fifteen years in the household, knew how to make all
the dishes held in most honor in Alencon.

Perhaps we ought to count for much the fat old Norman brown-bay mare,
which drew Mademoiselle Cormon to her country-seat at Prebaudet; for the
five inhabitants of the house bore to this animal a maniacal affection.
She was called Penelope, and had served the family for eighteen
years; but she was kept so carefully and fed with such regularity that
mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for ten years longer.
This beast was the subject of perpetual talk and occupation; it seemed
as if poor Mademoiselle Cormon, having no children on whom her repressed
motherly feelings could expend th