Chapter XII

"Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. "We were just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he's almost in the shoes of the good God himself!--was almost within that," he said to Josette, clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting hold of the Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about notes of hand."

"Well, pay them yourself," said Martha, "out of your wages."

"Where's the butter for my bread?" said Lemulquinier to the cook.

"Where's the money to buy it?" she answered, sharply. "Come, old villain, if you make gold in that devil's kitchen of yours, why don't you make butter? 'Twouldn't be half so difficult, and you could sell it in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won't spend more than one hundred francs a month for the whole household. There's only one dinner for all. If you want dainties you've got your furnaces upstairs where you fricassee pearls till there's nothing else talked of in town. Get your roast chickens up there."

Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.

"He will go and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha; "all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old scarecrow!"

"Starve him! that's the only way to manage him," said Josette. "For a week past he hasn't rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on them, I can tell him that."

"Ah!" exclaimed Martha, "I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking a Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he'd be burned alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa."

Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother's letter, and read as follows:--

My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin I shall