Flore made no reply. The silence became awkward, and Jean-Jacques then uttered this odious argument:
“Come, it would be better than going back to the fields, wouldn’t it?” he asked, with manifest eagerness.
“Dame! Monsieur Jean, as you please,” said she.
But notwithstanding this “as you please,” poor Rouget was no forwarder. Men of that type must have a certainty. The effort it is to them to confess their love is so great, and costs them so dear, that they know they can never do it again. Hence their attachment to the first woman who accepts them.
Events can only be inferred from the results. Ten months after his father’s death, Jean-Jacques was another man; his pallid, leaden-hued face, disfigured by little boils on the temples and forehead, had lighted up, grown clear-skinned, and acquired a rosy tinge. His countenance shone with happiness. Flore insisted on her master’s taking the greatest care of his person, and made it a point of honor to herself that he should be neatly dressed; she would look after him as he went out for a walk, standing on the doorstep till he was out of sight. All the town observed this alteration, which had made a new creature of Jean-Jacques Rouget.
“Have you heard the news?” asked one and another in Issoudun.
“Why—what?”
“Jean has inherited everything from his father, even la Rabouilleuse—”
“Did you suppose that the old doctor was not sharp enough to leave his son a housekeeper?”
“She is a perfect treasure for Rouget, that is certain,” was the general cry.
“She is a crafty one! She is very handsome; she will make him marry her.”
“What luck that girl has had!”
“It is the luck that only comes to handsome girls.”
“Pooh, nonsense! So you fancy. But there was my uncle, Borniche-Hérau; well, you have heard speak of Mademoiselle Ganivet; she was as ugly as the seven deadly sins, and he left her no less than a thousand crowns a year—”
“Bah! that was in 1778!”
“All the same, Rouget is a fool; his father left him at least forty thousand francs a year. He might have married Mademoiselle Hérau.”
“The doctor tried that on, but she would have nothing to say to it; Rouget is too great an idiot—”
“An idiot! Women are very happy with men of that sort.”
“Is your wife happy?”
Such were the comments current in Issoudun. Though, after the manners and customs of the provinces, the world began by laughing at this quasi-marriage, it ended by admiring Flore for devoting herself to this poor creature. This was how Flore Brazier rose to sovereignty over the house of Rouget, “from father to son” to quote the words of Goddet junior. It will now not be useless to sketch the history of her rule for the better information of other bachelors.
The only person in Issoudun to complain of Flore Brazier’s installation as queen on Jean-Jacques Rouget’s hearth was old Fanchette; she protested against such an immoral state of affairs, and took the part of outraged decency. To be sure, she felt humiliated at her age at having for her mistress a Rabouilleuse, a girl who had come to the house without a shoe to her foot. Fanchette had three hundred francs a year from securities in the funds, for the doctor had made her invest her savings, and her late master had left her an annuity of a hundred crowns, so she could live comfortably; and she left the house nine months after her old master’s funeral, on the 15th of April 1806. To the perspicacious reader, this will seem to mark the date when Flore ceased to be “an honest girl.”
La Rabouilleuse, keen enough to foresee Fanchette’s defection—for there is nothing like exercise of power to inculcate politics—had made up her mind to do without a maid. For the last six month she had, without betraying it, been studying the culinary arts which made Fanchette a cordon bleu worthy to cater for a doctor. As epicures, doctors may rank with bishops. Doctor Rouget had perfected Fanchette. In the country the lack of occupation, and the monotony of life, are apt to turn an active mind to cooking. Dinners are not so luxurious as in Paris, but they are better; the dishes are studied and thought out. Buried in the country, there are Carêmes in petticoats, undiscovered geniuses, who know how to turn out a simple dish of beans worthy of the approving nod with which Rossini welcomes a perfectly successful effort.
The doctor, while studying for his degree at Paris, had followed Rouelle’s course of chemistry, and had picked up some notions, which he turned to account in culinary chemistry. He is remembered at Issoudun for various improvements little known beyond the limits of le Berry. He discovered that an omelette is far more delicate when the white and yolk of the eggs are not beaten together in the rough-and-ready fashion in which most cooks perform the operation. By his recipe, the white should be beaten to a stiff froth, and the yolk added by degrees. Then it should not be cooked in a frying-pan, but in a cagnard of china or earthenware. A cagnard is a sort of thick dish on four feet, which, when it is placed on the charcoal stove, allow the air to surround it, and prevent its cracking. In Touraine, the cagnard is called a cauquemarre. Rabelais, I think, speaks of a cauquemarre for cooking the coquecigrues, which shows the high antiquity of the utensil. The doctor had also discovered a way of preventing the burnt flavor of brown sauce, but this secret, which he unfortunately kept in his own kitchen, has been lost.
Flore, born with the gift of frying and roasting, the two arts which neither study nor experience can acquire,
