The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard’s merits, and partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing between this family and the lower classes of the valley.  The two daughters, both remarkably handsome, followed the example of their mother as to morals.  Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-I-Vert, dating from 1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the common people.  From Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to meet and make their bargains and hear the news collected by the Tonsard women and by Mouche and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel and Brunet, that renowned official, when he came to the tavern in search of his practitioner.  There the price of hay and of wine was settled; also that of a day’s work and of piece-work.  Tonsard, a sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice and opinion while drinking with his guests.  Soulanges, according to a saying in these parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while Blangy was a business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial centre of Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years the capital of this flourishing valley.  The cattle and grain market was held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained served as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.

By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard continued fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who worked in the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old and haggard before they were thirty.  She liked to be well-dressed.  In point of fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a luxury.  The daughters, better dressed than their means warranted, followed their mother’s example.  Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant women.  On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty, obtained, Heaven knows how!  For one thing, the men-servants at Les Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off clothing of the lady’s-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert.  These girls, bohemians of the valley, received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals.  Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.

The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for.  In the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it; the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same.  The presence of old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was simply one immorality the more.  And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark to his bishop:—­