terings, mingled with bitter
sarcasm, saying, when she thought that we had gone out of earshot:
"Well, she need never have done what she must have done to bring all
this about! She found that pleasant enough, I dare say! She had better
not put on any airs now. All the same, he must have been a god-forsaken
young man to go after _that_. Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say
in my poor mother's country:

Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
And dirty sluts in plenty,
Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
When the heart is one-and-twenty."

Although, when her grandson had a slight cold in his head, she would Bet
off at night, even if she were ill also, instead of going to bed, to
see whether he had everything that he wanted, covering ten miles on foot
before daybreak so as to be in time to begin her work, this same love
for her own people, and her desire to establish the future greatness of
her house on a solid foundation reacted, in her policy with regard to
the other servants, in one unvarying maxim, which was never to let any
of them set foot in my aunt's room; indeed she shewed a sort of pride
in not allowing anyone else to come near my aunt, preferring, when she
herself was ill, to get out of bed and to administer the Vichy water in
person, rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry
into her mistress's presence. There is a species of hymenoptera,
observed by Fabre, the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a
supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls
in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive
cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds
with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which
their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions)
depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid,
will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive
quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh
for the larder: in the same way Francoise had adopted, to minister
to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the house
uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of crafty and pitiless
stratagems. Many years later we discovered that, if we had been fed on
asparagus day after day throughout that whole season, it was because the
smell of the plants gave the poor kitchen-maid, who had to prepare th