She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean, well-conducted and sensible.  All these things were better than money would be in the hands of a bad housewife.  Moreover, she had a few sous, left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous, almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings bank.  The old people, persuaded by his talk, and relying also on their own judgment, were gradually weakening, when he came to the delicate point.  Laughing in rather a constrained fashion, he said: 

“There’s only one thing you may not like.  She is not a white slip.”

They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky race of which they had only seen samples in pictures at Epinal.  Then they became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had proposed a union with the devil.

The mother said:  “Black?  How much of her is black?  Is the whole of her?”

He replied:  “Certainly.  Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere.”

The father interposed:  “Black?  Is it as black as the pot?”

The son answered:  “Perhaps a little less than that.  She is black, but not disgustingly black.  The cure’s cassock is black, but it is not uglier than a surplice which is white.”

The father said:  “Are there more black people besides her in her country?”

And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed:  “Certainly!”

But the old man shook his head.

“That must be unpleasant.”

And the son: 

“It isn’t more disagreeable than anything else when you get accustomed to it.”

The mother asked: 

“It doesn’t soil the underwear more than other skins, this black skin?”

“Not more than your own, as it is her proper color.”

Then, after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should see this girl before coming; to any decision, and that the young fellow, whose, term of military service would be over in a month, should bring her to the house in order that they might examine her and decide by talking the matter over whether or not she was too dark to enter the Boitelle family.

Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22d of May, the day of his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.

She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover’s parents, her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red and blue were the prevailing colors, so that she looked as if she were adorned for a national festival.