



Produced by Dagny, John Bickers and David Widger





A SIMPLE SOUL

By Gustave Flaubert




CHAPTER I

For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied Madame
Aubain her servant Felicite.

For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed,
ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the
butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was by
no means an agreeable person.

Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without any money, who died in
the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children and a number
of debts. She sold all her property excepting the farm of Toucques and
the farm of Geffosses, the income of which barely amounted to 5,000
francs; then she left her house in Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less
pretentious one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood back of
the market-place. This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built
between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The
interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble. A
narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain
sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs
stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing
beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes.
On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style,
stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta;
and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the
garden.

On the first floor was Madame's bed-chamber, a large room papered in a
flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the
costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, in which there
were two little cribs, without any mattresses. Next, came the parlour
(always closed), filled with furniture covered with sheets. Then a hall,
which led to the study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves
of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk.
Two panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache
landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and vanished
luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted Felicite's room,
which looked out upon the meadows.

She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked without
interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the dishes cleared
away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log under the
ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth with a rosary in her hand.
Nobody could bargain with greater obstinacy, and as for cleanliness,
the lustre on her brass sauce-pans was the envy and despair of other
servants. She was most economical, and when she ate she would gather up
crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing should be wasted of
the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was baked especially for
her and lasted three weeks.

Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with a
pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings, and an
apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.

Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her
age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.




CHAPTER II

Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her father,
who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding. Then her
mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a farmer took her
in, and while she was quite small, let her keep cows in the fields. She
was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the slightest offence and finally
dismissed for a theft of thirty sous which she did not commit. She took
service on another farm where she tended the poultry; and as she was
well thought of by her master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous.

One evening in August (she was then eighteen years old), they persuaded
her to accompany them to the fair at Colleville. She was immediately
dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the brightness of the
dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the crowd of people all
hopping at the same time. She was standing modestly at a distance, when
presently a young man of well-to-do appearance, who had been leaning on
the pole of a wagon and smoking his pipe, approached her, and asked her
for a dance. He treated her to cider and cake, bought her a silk shawl,
and then, thinking she had guessed his purpose, offered to see her home.
When they came to the end of a field he threw her down brutally. But she
grew frightened and screamed, and he walked off.

One evening, on the road leading to Beaumont, she came upon a wagon
loaded with hay, and when she overtook it, she recognised Theodore. He
greeted her calmly, and asked her to forget what had happened between
them, as it "was all the fault of the drink."

She did not know what to reply and wished to run away.

Presently he began to speak of the harvest and of the notables of the
village; his father had left Colleville and bought the farm of Les
Ecots, so that now they would be neighbours. "Ah!" she exclaimed. He
then added that his parents were looking around for a wife for him, but
that he, himself, was not so anxious and preferred to wait for a girl
who suited him. She hung her head. He then asked her whether she had
ever thought of marrying. She replied, smilingly, that it was wrong of
him to make fun of her. "Oh! no, I am in earnest," he said, and put his
left arm around her waist while they sauntered along. The air was soft,
the stars were bright, and the huge load of hay oscillated in front of
them, drawn by four horses whose ponderous hoofs raised clouds of dust.
Without a word from their driver they turned to the right. He kissed her
again and she went home. The following week, Theodore obtained meetings.

They met in yards, behind walls or under isolated trees. She was not
ignorant, as girls of well-to-do families are--for the animals had
instructed her;--but her reason and her instinct of honour kept her from
falling. Her resistance exasperated Theodore's love and so in order
to satisfy it (or perchance ingenuously), he offered to marry her. She
would not believe him at first, so he made solemn promises. But, in a
short time he mentioned a difficulty; the previous year, his parents had
purchased a substitute for him; but any day he might be drafted and the
prospect of serving in the army alarmed him greatly. To Felicite his
cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her devotion to him
grew stronger. When she met him, he would torture her with his fears and
his entreaties. At last, he announced that he was going to the prefect
himself for information, and would let her know everything on the
following Sunday, between eleven o'clock and midnight.

When the time grew near, she ran to meet her lover.

But instead of Theodore, one of his friends was at the meeting-place.

He informed her that she would never see her sweetheart again; for,
in order to escape the conscription, he had married a rich old woman,
Madame Lehoussais, of Toucques.

The poor girl's sorrow was frightful. She threw herself on the ground,
she cried and called on the Lord, and wandered around desolately until
sunrise. Then she went back to the farm, declared her intention of
leaving, and at the end of the month, after she had received her
wages, she packed all her belongings in a handkerchief and started for
Pont-l'Eveque.

In front of the inn, she met a woman wearing widow's weeds, and upon
questioning her, learned that she was looking for a cook. The girl
did not know very much, but appeared so willing and so modest in her
requirements, that Madame Aubain finally said:

"Very well, I will give you a trial."

And half an hour later Felicite was installed in her house.

At first she lived in a constant anxiety that was caused by "the style
of the household" and the memory of "Monsieur," that hovered over
everything. Paul and Virginia, the one aged seven, and the other
barely four, seemed made of some precious material; she carried them
pig-a-back, and was greatly mortified when Madame Aubain forbade her to
kiss them every other minute.

But in spite of all this, she was happy. The comfort of her new
surroundings had obliterated her sadness.

Every Thursday, friends of Madame Aubain dropped in for a game of
cards, and it was Felicite's duty to prepare the table and heat the
foot-warmers. They arrived at exactly eight o'clock and departed before
eleven.

Every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived under
the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk. Then the city would
be filled with a buzzing of voices in which the neighing of horses, the
bleating of lambs, the grunting of pigs, could be distinguished, mingled
with the sharp sound of wheels on the cobble-stones. About twelve
o'clock, when the market was in full swing, there appeared at the front
door a tall, middle-aged peasant, with a hooked nose and a cap on the
back of his head; it was Robelin, the farmer of Geffosses. Shortly
afterwards came Liebard, the farmer of Toucques, short, rotund and
ruddy, wearing a grey jacket and spurred boots.

Both men brought their landlady either chickens or cheese. Felicite
would invariably thwart their ruses and they held her in great respect.

At various times, Madame Aubain received a visit from the Marquis de
Gremanville, one of her uncles, who was ruined and lived at Falaise on
the remainder of his estates. He always came at dinner-time and brought
an ugly poodle with him, whose paws soiled their furniture. In spite of
his efforts to appear a man of breeding (he even went so far as to raise
his hat every time he said "My deceased father"), his habits got the
better of him, and he would fill his glass a little too often and relate
broad stories. Felicite would show him out very politely and say: "You
have had enough for this time, Monsieur de Gremanville! Hoping to see
you again!" and would close the door.

She opened it gladly for Monsieur Bourais, a retired lawyer. His bald
head and white cravat, the ruffling of his shirt, his flowing brown
coat, the manner in which he took snuff, his whole person, in fact,
produced in her the kind of awe which we feel when we see extraordinary
persons. As he managed Madame's estates, he spent hours with her in
Monsieur's study; he was in constant fear of being compromised, had a
great regard for the magistracy and some pretensions to learning.

In order to facilitate the children's studies, he presented them with
an engraved geography which represented various scenes of the world;
cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a young girl,
Arabs in the desert, a whale being harpooned, etc.

Paul explained the pictures to Felicite. And, in fact, this was her only
literary education.

The children's studies were under the direction of a poor devil employed
at the town-hall, who sharpened his pocket-knife on his boots and was
famous for his penmanship.

When the weather was fine, they went to Geffosses. The house was built
in the centre of the sloping yard; and the sea looked like a grey spot
in the distance. Felicite would take slices of cold meat from the lunch
basket and they would sit down and eat in a room next to the dairy. This
room was all that remained of a cottage that had been torn down.
The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in the drafts. Madame Aubain,
overwhelmed by recollections, would hang her head, while the children
were afraid to open their mouths. Then, "Why don't you go and play?"
their mother would say; and they would scamper off.

Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the pond,
or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they resounded like
drums. Virginia would feed the rabbits and run to pick the wild flowers
in the fields, and her flying legs would disclose her little embroidered
pantalettes. One autumn evening, they struck out for home through the
meadows. The new moon illumined part of the sky and a mist hovered like
a veil over the sinuosities of the river. Oxen, lying in the pastures,
gazed