第 一百六十五 章 · BASQUE AND NICOLETTE

He had theories. Here is one of them: “When a man is passionately fond

of women, and when he has himself a wife for whom he cares but little,

who is homely, cross, legitimate, with plenty of rights, perched on the

code, and jealous at need, there is but one way of extricating himself

from the quandry and of procuring peace, and that is to let his wife

control the purse-strings. This abdication sets him free. Then his wife

busies herself, grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her

fingers covered with verdigris in the process, undertakes the education

of half-share tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers,

presides over notaries, harangues scriveners, visits limbs of the law,

follows lawsuits, draws up leases, dictates contracts, feels herself

the sovereign, sells, buys, regulates, promises and compromises, binds

fast and annuls, yields, concedes and retrocedes, arranges,

disarranges, hoards, lavishes; she commits follies, a supreme and

personal delight, and that consoles her. While her husband disdains

her, she has the satisfaction of ruining her husband.” This theory M.

Gillenormand had himself applied, and it had become his history. His

wife—the second one—had administered his fortune in such a manner that,

one fine day, when M. Gillenormand found himself a widower, there

remained to him just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole

of it in an annuity of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which

would expire with him. He had not hesitated on this point, not being

anxious to leave a property behind him. Besides, he had noticed that

patrimonies are subject to adventures, and, for instance, become

_national property_; he had been present at the avatars of consolidated

three per cents, and he had no great faith in the Great Book of the

Public Debt. “All that’s the Rue Quincampois!” he said. His house in

the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire belonged to him, as we have already

stated. He had two servants, “a male and a female.” When a servant

entered his establishment, M. Gillenormand re-baptized him. He bestowed

on the men the name of their province: Nîmois, Comtois, Poitevin,

Picard. His last valet was a big, foundered, short-winded fellow of

fifty-five, who was incapable of running twenty paces; but, as he had

been born at Bayonne, M. Gillenormand called him _Basque_. All the

female servants in his house were called Nicolette (even the Magnon, of

whom we shall hear more farther on). One day, a haughty cook, a cordon

bleu, of the lofty race of porters, presented herself. “How much wages

do you want a month?” asked M. Gillenormand. “Thirty francs.” “What is

your name?” “Olympie.” “You shall have fifty francs, and you shall be

called Nicolette.”