On hearing this speech, the doctor, struck by the word innocent, signed to uncle Brazier, and led him out into the courtyard, and from thence into the garden, leaving the little Rabouilleuse looking at the table between Fanchette and Jean-Jacques, who cross-questioned her, and to whom she artlessly related her meeting with the doctor.
“Well, honey, goodbye,” said uncle Brazier on his return, kissing Flore on the forehead. “You may thank me for a good job in leaving you with this kind and generous father of the poor. You’ve got to obey him like as you would me. Be a very good girl, and do what he tells you.”
“Get the room over mine ready,” said the doctor to Fanchette. “This little Flore, who is certainly well named, will sleep there from this evening. Tomorrow we will send for a shoemaker and a needlewoman. Now, lay a place for her at once; she will keep us company.”
That evening nothing was talked of in Issoudun but the introduction of a little “Rabouilleuse” into Doctor Rouget’s household. The nickname stuck to Mademoiselle Brazier in this land of mocking spirits, before, during, and after her rise to fortune.
The doctor aimed, no doubt, at doing for Flore, in a small way, what Louis XV did on a large scale for Mademoiselle de Romans; but he set to work too late. Louis XV was still young, while the doctor was on the verge of old age.
From twelve years old to fourteen the charming peasant girl enjoyed unmixed happiness. Nicely dressed, in infinitely better clothes than the richest Miss in Issoudun, she had a gold watch and trinkets, given her by the doctor to encourage her in her studies, for she had a master to teach her reading, writing, and account-keeping. But the almost animal life led by the peasantry had given Flore such an aversion for the bitter cup of learning, that the doctor got no further with her education.
His intentions with regard to this girl whom he was polishing, teaching, and training with a care that was all the more pathetic, because he had been supposed incapable of tenderness, were variously interpreted by the vulgar gossips of the town, whose tattle gave rise, as in the matter of Agathe’s and Max’s parentage, to serious mistakes. It is not easy for the population of a town to disentangle the truth from a thousand conjectures in the midst of contradictory comments, and among all the hypotheses to which a single fact gives rise. In the provinces, as formerly among the politicians of la petite Provence at the Tuileries, everything must be accounted for, and at last everybody knows everything. But each individual clings to the view of affairs that he prefers; that is the only true one, he can prove it, and believes his own version exclusively. Hence, notwithstanding the unscreened life and the espionage of a country town, the truth is often obscured, and can be detected only by the impartiality of the historian, or of a superior mind looking down from a higher point of view.
“What do you suppose that old ape wants, at his age, of a child of fifteen?” said one and another, two years after Flore’s arrival.
“What indeed?” replied a third; “his high days are long since past and gone.”
“My dear fellow, the doctor is disgusted with his idiot of a son, and he cannot get over his hatred of Agathe; in that dilemma perhaps he has been such a good boy these two years past in order to marry the girl; and he might have a boy by her, strong and sturdy and wide awake like Max,” observed a wisehead.
“Get along! Do you suppose that after leading such a life as Lousteau and Rouget did between 1770 and 1787, a man of sixty-two is likely to have children? Not a bit of it; the old wretch has read his Old Testament, if only from a medical point of view, and he knows how King David warmed himself in his old age. That is all, my good fellow.”
“They say that Brazier, when he is fuddled, boasts at Vatan that he stole the child,” cried one of those people who prefer to believe the worst.
“Bless me! neighbor, and what won’t folks say at Issoudun?”
From 1800 to 1805, for five years, the doctor had the pleasure of educating Flore without the worry which Mademoiselle de Romans is said to have given to Louis the Well-beloved by her ambitions and pretensions. The little Rabouilleuse was so happy, comparing the position she now was in with the life she would have led with her uncle, that she submitted, no doubt, to her master’s requirements, as an Eastern slave does.
With all respect to the writers of idyls and to philanthropists, the sons of the soil have but vague notions of certain virtues; their scruples have their root in self-interest, not in any feeling for the good and beautiful; brought up to look forward to poverty, to incessant toil and want, the prospect makes them regard everything as allowable that can rescue them from the hell of hunger and everlasting labor, especially if it is not prohibited by law. If there are exceptions, they are rare. Virtue, socially speaking, is mated with ease, and begins with education. Flore Brazier was, therefore, an object of envy to every girl for six leagues round Issoudun, though in the eye of religion her conduct was in the highest degree reprehensible.
Flore, born in 1787, was brought up amid the Saturnalia of 1793 and 1798, whose lurid light was reflected on a land bereft of priesthood, worship, altars, or religious ceremonies, where marriage was a civil contract, and where revolutionary axioms left a deep impression, especially at Issoudun, where rebellion is traditional. Catholic worship was hardly reestablished in 1802. The Emperor had
