walk, until she could see him no longer. The whole
town noticed these changes, which had made a new man of the bachelor.

"Have you heard the news?" people said to each other in Issoudun.

"What is it?"

"Jean-Jacques inherits everything from his father, even the
Rabouilleuse."

"Don't you suppose the old doctor was wicked enough to provide a ruler
for his son?"

"Rouget has got a treasure, that's certain," said everybody.

"She's a sly one! She is very handsome, and she will make him marry
her."

"What luck that girl has had, to be sure!"

"The luck that only comes to pretty girls."

"Ah, bah! do you believe that? look at my uncle Borniche-Herau. You
have heard of Mademoiselle Ganivet? she was as ugly as seven capital
sins, but for all that, she got three thousand francs a year out of
him."

"Yes, but that was in 1778."

"Still, Rouget is making a mistake. His father left him a good forty
thousand francs' income, and he ought to marry Mademoiselle Herau."

"The doctor tried to arrange it, but she would not consent;
Jean-Jacques is so stupid--"

"Stupid! why women are very happy with that style of man."

"Is your wife happy?"

Such was the sort of tattle that ran through Issoudun. If people,
following the use and wont of the provinces, began by laughing at this
quasi-marriage, they ended by praising Flore for devoting herself to
the poor fellow. We now see how it was that Flore Brazier obtained the
management of the Rouget household,--from father to son, as young
Goddet had said. It is desirable to sketch the history of that
management for the edification of old bachelors.

Fanchette, the cook, was the only person in Issoudun who thought it
wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and
his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and
took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated
by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,--a child who had
been brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred
francs a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings
in that way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she could
therefore live at her ease without the necessity of working, and she
quitted the house nine months after the funeral of her old master,
April 15, 1806. That date may indicate, to a perspicacious observer,
the epoch at which Flore Brazier ceased to be an honest girl.

The Rabouilleu