CHAPTER I.
FELICITE For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was by no means an agreeable person.
Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without any money, who died in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children and a number of debts.

She sold all her property excepting the farm of Toucques and the farm of Geffosses, the income of which barely amounted to 5,000 francs; then she left her house in Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the market-place.
This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river.

The interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble.
A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window.
Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting.
An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes.

On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair.

The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden.
On the first floor was Madame's bedchamber, a large room papered in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the costume of a dandy.