Jacquotte loved the house as if it had belonged to her; and when she had lived in it for twenty-two years, had she not some grounds for deluding herself on that head?  After the cure’s death the house had been for sale; and Benassis, who had only just come into the country, had bought it as it stood, with the walls about it and the ground belonging to it, together with the plate, wine, and furniture, the old sundial, the poultry, the horse, and the woman-servant.  Jacquotte was the very pattern of a working housekeeper, with her clumsy figure, and her bodice, always of the same dark brown print with large red spots on it, which fitted her so tightly that it looked as if the material must give way if she moved at all.  Her colorless face, with its double chin, looked out from under a round plaited cap, which made her look paler than she really was.  She talked incessantly, and always in a loud voice—­this short, active woman, with the plump, busy hands.  Indeed, if Jacquotte was silent for a moment, and took a corner of her apron so as to turn it up in a triangle, it meant that a lengthy expostulation was about to be delivered for the benefit of master or man.  Jacquotte was beyond all doubt the happiest cook in the kingdom; for, that nothing might be lacking in a measure of felicity as great as may be known in this world below, her vanity was continually gratified—­the townspeople regarded her as an authority of an indefinite kind, and ranked her somewhere between the mayor and the park-keeper.

The master of the house found nobody in the kitchen when he entered it.

“Where the devil are they all gone?” he asked.  “Pardon me for bringing you in this way,” he went on, turning to Genestas.  “The front entrance opens into the garden, but I am so little accustomed to receive visitors that—­Jacquotte!” he called in rather peremptory tones.

A woman’s voice answered to the name from the interior of the house.  A moment later Jacquotte, assuming the offensive, called in her turn to Benassis, who forthwith went into the dining-room.

“Just like you, sir!” she exclaimed; “you never do like anybody else.  You always ask people to dinner without telling me beforehand, and you think that everything is settled as soon as you have called for Jacquotte!  You are not going to have the gentleman sit in the kitchen, are you?  Is not the salon to be unlocked and a fire to be lighted?  Nicolle is there, and will see after everything.  Now take the gentleman into the garden for a minute; that will amuse him; if he likes to look at pretty things, show him the arbor of hornbeam trees that the poor dear old gentleman made.  I shall have time then to lay the cloth, and to get everything ready, the dinner and the salon too.”

“Yes.  But, Jacquotte,” Benassis went on, “the gentleman is going to stay with us.  Do not forget to give a look round M. Gravier’s room, and see about the sheets and things, and——­”

“Now you are not going to interfere about the sheets, are you?” asked Jacquotte.  “If he is to sleep here, I know what must be done for him perfectly well.  You have not so much as set foot in M. Gravier’s room these ten months past.  There is nothing to see there, the place is as clean as a new pin.  Then will the gentleman make some stay here?” she continued in a milder tone.