For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.  
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, the , made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress—although the latter was by no means an agreeable person.
 
Madame Aubain had married a youth without any money, who died in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children and a number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the farm of Toucques and the farm of Geffosses, the income of which barely amounted to 5,000 francs; then she left her house in Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the market-place. This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The interior was so graded that it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, beneath a , was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden.
 
On the first floor was Madame’s bed-chamber, a large room papered in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, in which there were two little cribs, ............