notice to the old bachelor.

During these nine years Flore obtained in the long run, insensibly and
without aiming for it, an absolute control over her master. From the

first, she treated him very familiarly; then, without failing him in
proper respect, she so far surpassed him in superiority of mind and

force of character that he became in fact the servant of his servant.
Elderly child that he was, he met this masteryhalf-way by letting

Flore take such care of him that she treated him more as a mother
would a son; and he himself ended by clinging to her with the feeling

of a child dependent on a mother's protection. But there were other
ties between them not less tightly knotted. In the first place, Flore

kept the house and managed all its business. Jean-Jacques left
everything to the crab-girl so completely that life without her would

have seemed to him not only difficult, but impossible. In every way,
this woman had become the one need of his existence; she indulged all

his fancies, for she knew them well. He loved to see her bright face
always smiling at him,--the only face that had ever smiled upon him,

the only one to which he could look for a smile. This happiness, a
purely material happiness, expressed in the homely words which come

readiest to the tongue in a Berrichon household, and visible on the
fine countenance of the young woman, was like a reflection" target="_blank" title="n.反射；映象；想法">reflection of his own

inward content. The state into which Jean-Jacques was thrown when
Flore's brightness was clouded over by some passing annoyance revealed

to the girl her power over him, and, to make sure of it, she sometimes
liked to use it. Using such power means, with women of her class,

abusing it. The Rabouilleuse, no doubt, made her master play some of
those scenes buried in the mysteries of private life, of which Otway

gives a specimen in the tragedy of "Venice Preserved," where the scene
between the senator and Aquilina is the realization of the

magnificently horrible. Flore felt so secure of her power that,
unfortunately for her, and for the bachelor himself, it did not occur

to her to make him marry her.
Towards the close of 1815, Flore, who was then twenty-seven, had

reached the perfect development of her beauty. Plump and fresh, and
white as a Norman countrywoman, she was the ideal of what our

ancestors used to call "a buxom housewife." Her beauty, always that of
a handsome barmaid, though higher in type and better kept, gave her a

likeness to Mademoiselle George in her palmy days, setting aside the
latter's imperialdignity. Flore had the dazzling white round arms,

the ample modelling, the satiny textures of the skin, the alluring
though less rigidly correct outlines of the great actress. Her

expression was one of sweetness and tenderness; but her glance
commanded less respect than that of the noblest Agrippina that ever

trod the French stage since the days of Racine: on the contrary, it
evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and

fell in love with him at first sight. Her heart was cleft by the
mythological arrow,--admirable description of an effect of nature

which the Greeks, unable to conceive the chivalric, ideal, and
melancholy love begotten of Christianity, could represent in no other

way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained, and Max accepted his
conquest.

Thus, at twenty-eight years of age, the Rabouilleuse felt for the
first time a true love, an idolatrous love, the love which includes

all ways of loving,--that of Gulnare and that of Medora. As soon as
the penniless officer found out the respective situations of Flore and

Jean-Jacques Rouget, he saw something more desirable than an
"amourette" in an intimacy with the Rabouilleuse. He asked nothing

better for his future prosperity than to take up his abode at the
Rouget's, recognizing perfectly the feeble nature of the old bachelor.

Flore's passionnecessarilyaffected the life and household affairs of
her master. For a month the old man, now grown excessively timid, saw

the laughing and kindly face of his mistress change to something
terrible and gloomy and sullen. He was made to endure flashes of angry

temper purposely displayed, precisely like a married man whose wife is
meditating an infidelity. When, after some cruel rebuff, he nerved

himself to ask Flore the reason of the change, her eyes were so full
of hatred, and her voice so aggressive and contemptuous, that the poor

creature quailed under them.
"Good heavens!" she cried; "you have neither heart nor soul! Here's

sixteen years that I have spent my youth in this house, and I have
only just found out that you have got a stone there (striking her

breast). For two months you have seen before your eyes that brave
captain, a victim of the Bourbons, who was cut out for a general, and

is down in the depths of poverty, hunted into a hole of a place where
there's no way to make a penny of money! He's forced to sit on a stool

all day in the mayor's office to earn--what? Six hundred miserable
francs,--a fine thing, indeed! And here are you, with six hundred and

fifty-nine thousand well invested, and sixty thousand francs' income,
--thanks to me, who never spend more than three thousand a year,

everything included, even my own clothes, yes, everything!--and you
never think of offering him a home here, though there's the second

floor empty! You'd rather the rats and mice ran riot in it than put a
human being there,--and he a lad your father always allowed to be his

own son! Do you want to know what you are? I'll tell you,--a
fratricide! And I know why, too. You see I take an interest in him,

and that provokes you. Stupid as you seem, you have got more spite in
you than the spitefullest of men. Well, yes! I do take an interest in

him, and a keen one--"
"But, Flore--"

"'BUT, FLORE', indeed! What's that got to do with it? You may go and
find another Flore (if you can!), for I hope this glass of wine may

poison me if I don't get away from your dungeon of a house. I haven't,
God be thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I've been

with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the
bargain. I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that

I've done here,--washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to
market, cooking, taking care of your interests before everything,

slaving myself to death from morning till night,--and this is my
reward!"

"But, Flore--"
"Oh, yes, 'FLORE'! find another Flore, if you can, at your time of

life, fifty-one years old, and getting feeble,--for the way your
health is failing is frightful, I know that! and besides, you are none

too amusing--"
"But, Flore--"

"Let me alone!"
She went out, slamming the door with a violence that echoed through

the house, and seemed to shake it to its foundations. Jean-Jacques
softly opened the door and went, still more softly, into the kitchen

where she was muttering to herself.
"But, Flore," said the poor sheep, "this is the first time I have

heard of this wish of yours; how do you know whether I will agree to
it or not?"

"In the first place," she said, "there ought to be a man in the house.
Everybody knows you have ten, fifteen, twenty thousand francs here; if

they came to rob you we should both be murdered. For my part, I don't
care to wake up some fine morning chopped in quarters, as happened to

that poor servant-girl who was silly enough to defend her master.
Well! if the robbers knew there was a man in the house as brave as

Caesar and who wasn't born yesterday,--for Max could swallow three
burglars as quick as a flash,--well, then I should sleep easy. People

may tell you a lot of stuff,--that I love him, that I adore him,--and
some say this and some say that! Do you know what you ought to say?

You ought to answer that you know it; that your father told you on his
deathbed to take care of his poor Max. That will stop people's

tongues; for every stone in Issoudun can tell you he paid Max's
schooling--and so! Here's nine years that I have eaten your bread--"

"Flore,--Flore!"
"--and many a one in this town has paid court to me, I can tell you!

Gold chains here, and watches there,--what don't they offer me? 'My
little Flore,' they say, 'why won't you leave that old fool of a

Rouget,'--for that's what they call you. 'I leave him!' I always