The physiognomy of the bourgeois cook of 1840 is, moreover, one of those details essentially necessary to a history of manners and customs, and clever housewives may find some lessons in it.

A woman doesn't make empty bags for twenty years without looking out for the means to fill a few of them.

Now Brigitte had one peculiar characteristic.

She united the economy to which she owed her fortune with a full understanding of necessary expenses.

Her relative prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the antipodes of avarice.