The terrible Mademoiselle Cochet, her maid and female vizier, had tried to enlighten her mistress when she saw the ascendency Gaubertin was obtaining over one whom he began by calling “Madame” in defiance of the revolutionary laws about equality; but Gaubertin, in his turn, enlightened Mademoiselle Cochet by showing her a so-called denunciation sent to his father, the prosecuting attorney, in which she was vehemently accused of corresponding with Pitt and Coburg.  From that time forward the two powers went on shares—­shares a la Montgomery.  Cochet praised Gaubertin to Madame, and Gaubertin praised Cochet.  The waiting-maid had already made her own bed, and knew she was down for sixty thousand francs in the will.  Madame could not do without Cochet, to whom she was accustomed.  The woman knew the secrets of dear mistress’s toilet; she alone could put dear mistress to sleep at night with her gossip, and get her up in the morning with her flattery; to the day of dear mistress’s death the maid never could see the slightest change in her, and when dear mistress lay in her coffin, she doubtless thought she had never seen her looking so well.

The annual pickings of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet, their wages and perquisites, became so large that the most affectionate relative could not possibly have been more devoted than they to their kindly mistress.  There is really no describing how a swindler cossets his dupe.  A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved daughter as the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow.  What brilliant success attends the performance of Tartufe behind the closed doors of a home!  It is worth more than friendship.  Moliere died too soon; he would otherwise have shown us the misery of Orgon, wearied by his family, harassed by his children, regretting the blandishments of Tartufe, and thinking to himself, “Ah, those were the good times!”

During the last eight years of her life the mistress of Les Aigues received only thirty thousand francs of the fifty thousand really yielded by the estate.  Gaubertin had reached the same administrative results as his predecessor, though farm rents and territorial products were notably increased between 1791 and 1815,—­not to speak of Madame’s continual purchases.  But Gaubertin’s fixed idea of acquiring Les Aigues at the old lady’s death led him to depreciate the value of the magnificent estate in the matter of its ostensible revenues.  Mademoiselle Cochet, a sharer in the scheme, was also to share the profits.  As the ex-divinity in her declining years received an income of twenty thousand francs from the Funds called consolidated (how readily the tongue of politics can jest!), and with difficulty spent the said sum yearly, she was much surprised at the annual purchases made by her steward to use up the accumulating revenues, remembering how in former times she had always drawn them in advance.  The result of having few wants in her old age seemed, to her mind, a proof of the honesty and uprightness of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet.