Old Rouget had killed enough people to be able to foresee his own end. His notary, finding him on his deathbed, wrapped in the cloak of encyclopedist philosophy, urged him to do something for the young girl, then seventeen years old.
“Very good, make her of age, emancipate her,” said he.
The reply is characteristic of this old man, who never failed to point his sarcasm with an allusion to the profession of the man he was answering. By veiling his evil deeds under a witticism he obtained forgiveness for them in a part of the world where wit always wins the day, especially when it is backed up by intelligent self-interest. The notary heard in this speech the concentrated hatred of a man whom Nature had balked of an intended debauch, and his revenge on the innocent object of his senile affection. This opinion was, to some extent, confirmed by the doctor’s obduracy; he left nothing to la Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, “Her beauty is wealth enough!” when the notary again pressed the matter.
Jean-Jacques Rouget did not mourn for the old man, but Flore did. The doctor had made his son very unhappy, especially since he had come of age, which was in 1791; whereas he had given the little peasant girl the material happiness which is the ideal of laboring folk. When, after the old man was buried, Fanchette said to Flore, “Well, what is to become of you now that monsieur is gone?” Jean-Jacques’ eyes beamed, and for the first time in his life his stolid face lighted up, seemed to shine with a flash of thought, and expressed a feeling.
“Leave her with me,” said he to Fanchette, who was clearing the table.
Flore, at seventeen, still had that refinement of figure and face, that elegance of beauty which had bewitched the doctor; women of the world know how to preserve it, but in a peasant girl it fades as swiftly as the flowers of the field. At the same time, the tendency to become stout, which comes to all handsome country women when they do not lead a life of toil and privation in the open fields and sunshine, was already noticeable in Flore. Her bust was large, her round, white shoulder were richly moulded and finely joined to a throat that already showed fat wrinkles. But the shape of her face was still pure, and her chin as yet delicately cut.
“Flore,” said Jean-Jacques in agitated tones, “you are quite used to this house?”
“Yes, Monsieur Jacques.”
On the very verge of a declaration, the heir felt his tongue tied by the remembrance of the dead man but now laid in his grave, and wondered to what lengths his father’s benevolence might have gone. Flore, looking at her new master, and incapable of imagining his simplicity, waited for some minutes for Jean-Jacques to proceed; but she presently left him, not knowing what to think of his obstinate silence. Whatever education she might have had from the doctor, it was many a day before she understood the character of his son, of whose this, in a few words, is the history.
At his father’s death, Jacques, now thirty-seven years old, was as timid and as submissive to parental discipline as any boy of twelve. This timidity will account for his childhood, youth, and life to such readers as might not otherwise believe in such a character, or the facts of a story which is common, alas! in every rank of life—even among princes, for Sophie Dawes was taken up by the last of the Condés in a worse position than that of la Rabouilleuse. There are two kinds of timidity—timidity of mind, and timidity of the nerves; physical timidity, and moral timidity. Each is independent of the other. The body may be frightened and quake while the mind remains calm and bold, and vice versa. This is the key to many eccentricities of conduct. When both kinds meet in the same man he will be good for nothing all his life. This utter timidity is that of the person of whom we say, “He is imbecile.” Still, this imbecility sometimes covers great qualities though suppressed. To this double infirmity perhaps do we owe certain monks who have lived in ecstasy. This unhappy moral and physical disposition may be produced by the perfection of the bodily organs and of the soul, as well as by certain defects, as yet not fully studied.
Jean-Jacques’ timidity arose from a certain torpor of his faculties, which a first-rate tutor, or a surgeon like Desplein, would have roused. In him, as in cretins, the sensual side of love had absorbed the strength and energy which his intelligence lacked, though he had sense enough to conduct himself through life. The violence of his passion, stripped of the ideal, in which it blossoms in other young men, added to his timidity. He never could make up his mind to go courting, to use a familiar expression, to any woman in Issoudun. Now no young girl or woman could make advances to an undersized man, with a vulgar face, which two prominent green-gooseberry eyes would have made ugly enough, if pinched features and a sallow complexion had not made him look old before his time. In fact,
