The four faithful servants—­for Penelope’s intelligence raised her to the level of the other good servants; while they, on the other hand, had lowered themselves to the mute, submissive regularity of the beast —­went and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible accuracy of mechanism.  But, as they said in their idiom, they had eaten their white bread first.  Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons nervously agitated by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and nagging, less by nature than from the need of employing her activity.  Having no husband or children to occupy her, she fell back on petty details.  She talked for hours about mere nothings, on a dozen napkins marked “Z,” placed in the closet before the “O’s.”

“What can Josette be thinking of?” she exclaimed.  “Josette is beginning to neglect things.”

Mademoiselle inquired for eight days running whether Penelope had had her oats at two o’clock, because on one occasion Jacquelin was a trifle late.  Her narrow imagination spent itself on trifles.  A layer of dust forgotten by the feather-duster, a slice of toast ill-made by Mariette, Josette’s delay in closing the blinds when the sun came round to fade the colors of the furniture,—­all these great little things gave rise to serious quarrels in which mademoiselle grew angry.  “Everything was changing,” she would cry; “she did not know her own servants; the fact was she spoiled them!” On one occasion Josette gave her the “Journee du Chretien” instead of the “Quinzaine de Paques.”  The whole town heard of this disaster the same evening.  Mademoiselle had been forced to leave the church and return home; and her sudden departure, upsetting the chairs, made people suppose a catastrophe had happened.  She was therefore obliged to explain the facts to her friends.

“Josette,” she said gently, “such a thing must never happen again.”

Mademoiselle Cormon was, without being aware of it, made happier by such little quarrels, which served as cathartics to relieve her bitterness.  The soul has its needs, and, like the body, its gymnastics.  These uncertainties of temper were accepted by Josette and Jacquelin as changes in the weather are accepted by husbandmen.  Those worthy souls remark, “It is fine to-day,” or “It rains,” without arraigning the heavens.  And so when they met in the morning the servants would wonder in what humor mademoiselle would get up, just as a farmer wonders about the mists at dawn.

Mademoiselle Cormon had ended, as it was natural she should end, in contemplating herself only in the infinite pettinesses of her life.  Herself and God, her confessor and the weekly wash, her preserves and the church services, and her uncle to care for, absorbed her feeble intellect.  To her the atoms of life were magnified by an optic peculiar to persons who are selfish by nature or self-absorbed by some accident.  Her perfect health gave alarming meaning to the least little derangement of her digestive organs.  She