ter for
three townships, legal practitioner for one, and clarionet-player at
large, hindered, so he said, the development of his business.

Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in
the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of
property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common
accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because
Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and
well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife
for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary
revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and
rarely look back to causes.

Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard's
vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself,
she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first place, she
managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and
Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to the means. He
cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted
of her. That is the secret agreement of many a household. Madame Tonsard
established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being
the servants of Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.

Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La
Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine
to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as
Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty
commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the
wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard
was naturally an excellent cook; and though her talents were only
exercised on the common dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce,
stewed fish and omelets, she was considered in all the country round to
be an admirable cook of the sort of food which is eaten at a counter and
spiced in a way to excite a desire for drink. By the end of two years,
she had managed to rule Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which,
indeed, he asked no better than to indulge in.

The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.
The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the
rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured
him impunity. As