the hot water," cried Flore.

"Vedie!" exclaimed the poor man, stupefied with fear of the anger that
was crushing him. "Vedie, what is the matter with Madame this
morning?"

Flore Brazier required her master and Vedie and Kouski and Max to call
her Madame.

"She seems to have heard something about you which isn't to your
credit," answered Vedie, assuming an air of deep concern. "You are
doing wrong, monsieur. I'm only a poor servant-woman, and you may say
I have no right to poke my nose into your affairs; but I do say you
may search through all the women in the world, like that king in holy
Scripture, and you won't find the equal of Madame. You ought to kiss
the ground she steps on. Goodness! if you make her unhappy, you'll
only spoil your own life. There she is, poor thing, with her eyes full
of tears."

Vedie left the poor man utterly cast down; he dropped into an armchair
and gazed into vacancy like the melancholy imbecile that he was, and
forgot to shave. These alternations of tenderness and severity worked
upon this feeble creature whose only life was through his amorous
fibre, the same morbid effect which great changes from tropical heat
to arctic cold produce upon the human body. It was a moral pleurisy,
which wore him out like a physical disease. Flore alone could thus
affect him; for to her, and to her alone, he was as good as he was
foolish.

"Well, haven't you shaved yet?" she said, appearing at his door.

Her sudden presence made the old man start violently; and from being
pale and cast down he grew red for an instant, without, however,
daring to complain of her treatment.

"Your breakfast is waiting," she added. "You can come down as you are,
in dressing-gown and slippers; for you'll breakfast alone, I can tell
you."

Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared. To make him breakfast
alone was the punishment he dreaded most; he loved to talk to her as
he ate his meals. When he got to the foot of the staircase he was
taken with a fit of coughing; for emotion excited his catarrh.

"Cough away!" said Flore in the kitchen, without caring whether he
heard her or not. "Confound the old wretch! he is able enough to get
over it without bothering others. If he coughs up his soul, it will
only be after--"

Such were the amenities the Rabouilleuse addressed to Rouget when she
was angry. The poor man sat down in deep distress at a corner of the
table in the middle of the room, and looked at his old fu