she served
them loyally, honestly, and discreetly. The Vedie, as she was called,
was noticeable for a face deeply pitted by the small-pox, and
correspondingly ugly.

After the new cook had entered upon her duties, the Rabouilleuse took
the title of Madame Brazier. She wore corsets; she had silk, or
handsome woollen and cotton dresses, according to the season,
expensive neckerchiefs, embroidered caps and collars, lace ruffles at
her throat, boots instead of shoes, and, altogether, adopted a
richness and elegance of apparel which renewed the youthfulness of her
appearance. She was like a rough diamond, that needed cutting and
mounting by a jeweller to bring out its full value. Her desire was to
do honor to Max. At the end of the first year, in 1817, she brought a
horse, styled English, from Bourges, for the poor cavalry captain, who
was weary of going afoot. Max had picked up in the purlieus of
Issoudun an old lancer of the Imperial Guard, a Pole named Kouski, now
very poor, who asked nothing better than to quarter himself in
Monsieur Rouget's house as the captain's servant. Max was Kouski's
idol, especially after the duel with the three royalists. So, from
1817, the household of the old bachelor was made up of five persons,
three of whom were masters, and the expenses advanced to about eight
thousand francs a year.

CHAPTER X

At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun to save--as Maitre
Desroches expressed it--an inheritance that was seriously threatened,
Jean-Jacques Rouget had reached by degrees a condition that was
semi-vegetative. In the first place, after Max's instalment, Flore put
the table on an episcopal footing. Rouget, thrown in the way of good
living, ate more and still more, enticed by the Vedie's excellent
dishes. He grew no fatter, however, in spite of this abundant and
luxurious nourishment. From day to day he weakened like a worn-out
man,--fatigued, perhaps, with the effort of digestion,--and his eyes
had dark circles around them. Still, when his friends and neighbors
met him in his walks and questioned him about his health, he always
answered that he was never better in his life. As he had always been
thought extremely deficient in mind, people did not notice the
constant lowering of his faculties. His love for Flore was the one
thing that kept him alive; in fact, he existed only for her, and his
weakness in her presence was unbounded; he obeyed the creatu