“Two pearls!” she said to the persons who came to see her.

Gaubertin kept his accounts with apparent honesty.  He entered all rentals duly.  Everything that could strike the feeble mind of the late singer, so far as arithmetic went, was clear and precise.  The steward took his commission on all disbursements,—­on the costs of working the estate, on rentals made, on suits brought, on work done, on repairs of every kind,—­details which Madame never dreamed of verifying, and for which he sometimes charged twice over by collusion with the contractors, whose silence was bought by permission to charge the highest prices.  These methods of dealing conciliated public opinion in favor of Gaubertin, while Madame’s praise was on every lip; for besides the payments she disbursed for work, she gave away large sums of money in alms.

“May God preserve her, the dear lady!” was heard on all sides.

The truth was, everybody got something out of her, either indirectly or as a downright gift.  In reprisals, as it were, of her youth the old actress was pillaged; so discreetly pillaged, however, that those who throve upon her kept their depredations within certain limits lest even her eyes might be opened and she should sell Les Aigues and return to Paris.

This system of “pickings” was, alas! the cause of Paul-Louis Carter’s assassination; he committed the mistake of advertising the sale of his estate and allowing it to be known that he should take away his wife, on whom a number of the Tonsards of Lorraine were battening.  Fearing to lose Madame des Aigues, the marauders on the estate forbore to cut the young trees, unless pushed to extremities by finding no branches within reach of shears fastened to long poles.  In the interests of robbery, they did as little harm as they could; although, during the last years of Madame’s life, the habit of cutting wood became more and more barefaced.  On certain clear nights not less than two hundred bundles were taken.  As to the gleaning of fields and vineyards, Les Aigues lost, as Sibilet had pointed out, not less than one quarter of its products.

Madame des Aigues had forbidden Cochet to marry during her lifetime, with the selfishness often shown in all countries by a mistress to a maid; which is not more irrational than the mania for keeping possession, until our last gasp, of property that is utterly useless to our material comfort, at the risk of being poisoned by impatient heirs.  Twenty days after the old lady’s burial Mademoiselle Cochet married the brigadier of the gendarmerie of Soulanges, named Soudry, a handsome man, forty-two years of age, who, ever since 1800 (in which year the gendarmerie was formed) had come every day to Les Aigues to see the waiting-maid, and dined with her at least three times a week at the Gaubertins’.