A SIMPLE SOUL
By Gustave Flaubert
CHAPTER I
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 bed-chamber, a large room papered in a
flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the
costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, in which
there were two little cribs, without any mattresses. Next, came the
parlour (always closed), filled with furniture covered with sheets.
Then a hall, which led to the study, where books and papers were piled
on the shelves of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big
black desk. Two panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink
sketches, Gouache landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better
times and vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window
lighted Felicite's room, which looked out upon the meadows.
She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked without
interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the dishes
cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log
under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth with a rosary
in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater obstinacy, and as for
cleanliness, the lustre on her brass sauce-pans was the envy and
despair of other servants. She was most economical, and when she ate
she would gather up crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing
should be wasted of the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was
baked especially for her and lasted three weeks.
Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with
a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings,
and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;
erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.
