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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 Filles-du-Clavaire 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:
Nimois, 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."
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