2.M.2.5. 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."