And the Baron paid the rent
of her little apartment, furnished, as we know, with the leavings of
her friend Valerie's former boudoir and bedroom.
"I began," she would say, "as a hungry nanny goat, and I am ending as
a _lionne_."
She still worked for Monsieur Rivet at the more elaborate kinds of
gold-trimming, merely, as she said, not to lose her time. At the same
time, she was, as we shall see, very full of business; but it is
inherent in the nature of country-folks never to give up
bread-winning; in this they are like the Jews.
Every morning, very early, Cousin Betty went off to market with the
cook. It was part of Lisbeth's scheme that the house-book, which was
ruining Baron Hulot, was to enrich her dear Valerie--as it did indeed.
Is there a housewife who, since 1838, has not suffered from the evil
effects of Socialist doctrines diffused among the lower classes by
incendiary writers? In every household the plague of servants is
nowadays the worst of financial afflictions. With very few exceptions,
who ought to be rewarded with the Montyon prize, the cook, male or
female, is a domestic robber, a thief taking wages, and perfectly
barefaced, with the Government for a fence, developing the tendency to
dishonesty, which is almost authorized in the cook by the time-honored
jest as to the "handle of the basket." The women who formerly picked
up their forty sous to buy a lottery ticket now take fifty francs to
put into the savings bank.
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