have not given you pleasure?" he said with confusion.

She threw her arms about his neck, and assured him with tears in her
eyes that she was very happy. He was so good to her! He was so unwearied
in his devotion to her! And when, later in the morning, he ventured to
speak of making some changes in her room, of covering the walls with
tapestry, of putting down a carpet, she again remonstrated.

"Oh! no, no! I beg of you. Do not touch my old room, so full of
memories, where I have grown up, where I told you I loved you. I should
no longer feel myself at home in it."

Downstairs, Martine's obstinate silence condemned still more strongly
these excessive and useless expenses. She had adopted a less familiar
attitude, as if, in the new situation, she had fallen from her role
of housekeeper and friend to her former station of servant. Toward
Clotilde, especially, she changed, treating her like a young lady, like
a mistress to whom she was less affectionate but more obedient than
formerly. Two or three times, however, she had appeared in the morning
with her face discolored and her eyes sunken with weeping, answering
evasively when questioned, saying that nothing was the matter, that she
had taken cold. And she never made any remark about the gifts with which
the drawers were filled. She did not even seem to see them, arranging
them without a word either of praise or dispraise. But her whole nature
rebelled against this extravagant generosity, of which she could never
have conceived the possibility. She protested in her own fashion;
exaggerating her economy and reducing still further the expenses of
the housekeeping, which she now conducted on so narrow a scale that she
retrenched even in the smallest expenses. For instance, she took only
two-thirds of the milk which she had been in the habit of taking, and
she served sweet dishes only on Sundays. Pascal and Clotilde, without
venturing to complain, laughed between themselves at this parsimony,
repeating the jests which had amused them for ten years past, saying
that after dressing the vegetables she strained them in the colander, in
order to save the butter for future use.

But this quarter she insisted upon rendering an account. She was in the
habit of going every three months to Master Grandguillot, the notary,
to receive the fifteen hundred francs income, of which she disposed
afterward according to her judgment, entering the expenses in a book
which the doctor had years