the poor man was so little particular that you might feed him on
cabbage for partridges, and he would not find it out; and if it were

not for her, he would very often wear the same shirt for a week on
end. Jacquotte, however, was an indefatigable folder of linen, a born

rubber and polisher of furniture, and a passionate lover of a
perfectly religious and ceremonialcleanliness of the most scrupulous,

the most radiant, and most fragrant kind. A sworn foe to dust, she
swept and scoured and washed without ceasing.

The condition of the gateway caused her acute distress. On the first
day of every month for the past ten years, she had extorted from her

master a promise that he would replace the gate with a new one, that
the walls of the house should be lime-washed, and that everything

should be made quite straight and proper about the place; but so far,
the master had not kept his word. So it happened that whenever she

fell to lamenting over Benassis' deeply-rooted carelessness" target="_blank" title="n.粗心；漫不经心">carelessness about
things, she nearly always ended solemnly in these words with which all

her praises of her master usually terminated:
"You cannot say that he is a fool, because he works such miracles, as

you may say, in the place; but, all the same, he is a fool at times,
such a fool that you have to do everything for him as if he were a

child."
Jacquotte loved the house as if it had belonged to her; and when she

had lived in it for twenty-two years, had she not some grounds for
deluding herself on that head? After the cure's death the house had

been for sale; and Benassis, who had only just come into the country,
had bought it as it stood, with the walls about it and the ground

belonging to it, together with the plate, wine, and furniture, the old
sundial, the poultry, the horse, and the woman-servant. Jacquotte was

the very pattern of a workinghousekeeper, with her clumsy figure, and
her bodice, always of the same dark brown print with large red spots

on it, which fitted her so tightly that it looked as if the material
must give way if she moved at all. Her colorless face, with its double

chin, looked out from under a round plaited cap, which made her look
paler than she really was. She talked incessantly, and always in a

loud voice--this short, active woman, with the plump, busy hands.
Indeed, if Jacquotte was silent for a moment, and took a corner of her

apron so as to turn it up in a triangle, it meant that a lengthy
expostulation was about to be delivered for the benefit of master or

man. Jacquotte was beyond all doubt the happiest cook in the kingdom;
for, that nothing might be lacking in a measure of felicity as great

as may be known in this world below, her vanity was continually
gratified--the townspeople regarded her as an authority of an

indefinite kind, and ranked her somewhere between the mayor and the
park-keeper.

The master of the house found nobody in the kitchen when he entered
it.

"Where the devil are they all gone?" he asked. "Pardon me for bringing
you in this way," he went on, turning to Genestas. "The front entrance

opens into the garden, but I am so little accustomed to receive
visitors that--Jacquotte!" he called in rather peremptory tones.

A woman's voice answered to the name from the interior of the house. A
moment later Jacquotte, assuming the offensive, called in her turn to

Benassis, who forthwith went into the dining-room.
"Just like you, sir!" she exclaimed; "you never do like anybody else.

You always ask people to dinner without telling me beforehand, and you
think that everything is settled as soon as you have called for

Jacquotte! You are not going to have the gentleman sit in the kitchen,
are you? Is not the salon to be unlocked and a fire to be lighted?

Nicolle is there, and will see after everything. Now take the
gentleman into the garden for a minute; that will amuse him; if he

likes to look at pretty things, show him the arbor of hornbeam trees
that the poor dear old gentleman made. I shall have time then to lay

the cloth, and to get everything ready, the dinner and the salon too."
"Yes. But, Jacquotte," Benassis went on, "the gentleman is going to

stay with us. Do not forget to give a look round M. Gravier's room,
and see about the sheets and things, and ----"

"Now you are not going to interfere about the sheets, are you?" asked
Jacquotte. "If he is to sleep here, I know what must be done for him

perfectly well. You have not so much as set foot in M. Gravier's room
these ten months past. There is nothing to see there, the place is as

clean as a new pin. Then will the gentleman make some stay here?" she
continued in a milder tone.

"Yes."
"How long will he stay?"

"Faith, I do not know: What does it matter to you?"
"What does it matter to me, sir? Oh! very well, what does it matter to

me? Did any one ever hear the like! And the provisions and all that
and----"

At any other time she would have overwhelmed her master with
reproaches for his breach of trust, but now she followed him into the

kitchen before the torrent of words had come to an end. She had
guessed that there was a prospect of a boarder, and was eager to see

Genestas, to whom she made a very deferential courtesy, while she
scanned him from head to foot. A thoughtful and dejected expression

gave a harsh look to the soldier's face. In the dialogue between
master and servant the latter had appeared to him in the light of a

nonentity; and although he regretted the fact, this revelation had
lessened the high opinion that he had formed of the man whose

persistent efforts to save the district from the horrors of cretinism
had won his admiration.

"I do not like the looks of that fellow at all!" said Jacquotte to
herself.

"If you are not tired, sir," said the doctor to his supposed patient,
"we will take a turn round the garden before dinner."

"Willingly," answered the commandant.
They went through the dining-room, and reached the garden by way of a

sort of vestibule at the foot of the staircase between the salon and
the dining-room. Beyond a great glass door at the farther end of the

vestibule lay a flight of stone steps which adorned the garden side of
the house. The garden itself was divided into four large squares of

equal size by two paths that intersected each other in the form of a
cross, a box edging along their sides. At the farther end there was a

thick, green alley of hornbeam trees, which had been the joy and pride
of the late owner. The soldier seated himself on a worm-eaten bench,

and saw neither the trellis-work nor the espaliers, nor the vegetables
of which Jacquotte took such great care. She followed the traditions

of the epicurean churchman to whom this valuable garden owed its
origin; but Benassis himself regarded it with sufficient indifference.

The commandant turned their talk from the trivial matters which had
occupied them by saying to the doctor:

"How comes it, sir, that the population of the valley has been trebled
in ten years? There were seven hundred souls in it when you came, and

to-day you say that they number more than two thousand."
"You are the first person who has put that question to me," the doctor

answered. "Though it has been my aim to develop the capabilities of
this little corner of the earth to the utmost, the constant pressure

of a busy life has not left me time to think over the way in which
(like the mendicant brother) I have made 'broth from a flint' on a

large scale. M. Gravier himself, who is one of several who have done a
great deal for us, and to whom I was able to render a service by re-

establishing his health, has never given a thought to the theory,
though he has been everywhere over our mountain sides with me, to see

its practical results."
There was a moment's silence, during which Benassis followed his own

thoughts, careless of the keen glance by which his guest friend tried
to fathom him.

"You ask how it came about, my dear sir?" the doctor resumed. "It came
about quite naturally through the working of the social law by which

the need and the means of supplying it are correlated. Herein lies the