"Great lazy thing! if she had taken the trouble to make her bed she would have found them." As it was 1791 everybody laughed; but a dead silence succeeded the laugh.
"There is nothing laughable in that," said the housekeeper; "since I have been ill Arsene sleeps in my room." In spite of this explanation the Abbe Niseron looked thunderbolts at Madame Niseron and his nephew, thinking they were plotting mischief against him.

The housekeeper died.

Rigou contrived to work up the abbe's resentment to such a pitch that he made a will disinheriting Jean-Francois Niseron in favor of Arsene Pichard.
In 1823 Rigou, perhaps out of a sense of gratitude, still blew the fire with an air-cane, and left the bellows hanging to the screw.
Madame Niseron, idolizing her daughter, did not long survive her.

Mother and child died in 1794.

The old abbe, too, was dead, and citizen Rigou took charge of Arsene's affairs by marrying her.