The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Simple Soul, by Gustave Flaubert

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Title: A Simple Soul

Author: Gustave Flaubert

Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #1253]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Dagny, John Bickers and David Widger

A SIMPLE SOUL

By Gustave Flaubert

CHAPTER I

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, fattened the poultry, made the
butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was by
no means an agreeable person.

Madame Aubain had married a comely 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
pretentious 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 unevenly 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, standing
beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes.
On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style,
stood a tapestry 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, without any mattresses. Next, came the parlour
(always closed), filled with furniture cover