There was a cafe in the village,at which ladies and gentlemen could get a cup of coffee or a glass of eau sucre;but no such accommodation was to be had in the establishment.Not by any possible bribery or persuasion could any meal be procured at any other than the authorised hours.A visitor who should enter the salle a manger more than ten minutes after the last bell would be looked at very sourly by Madame Bauche,who on all occasions sat at the top of her own table.Should any one appear as much as half an hour late,he would receive only his share of what had not been handed round.But after the last dish had been so handed,it was utterly useless for any one to enter the room at all.
Her appearance at the period of our tale was perhaps not altogether in her favour.She was about sixty years of age and was very stout and short in the neck.She wore her own gray hair,which at dinner was always tidy enough;but during the 'whole day previous to that hour she might be seen with it escaping from under her cap in extreme disorder.Her eyebrows were large and bushy,but those alone would not have given to her face that look of indomitable sternness which it possessed.Her eyebrows were serious in their effect,but not so serious as the pair of green spectacles which she always wore under them.It was thought by those who had analysed the subject that the great secret of Madame Bauche's power lay in her green spectacles.
Her custom was to move about and through the whole establishment every day from breakfast till the period came for her to dress for dinner.She would visit every chamber and every bath,walk once or twice round the salle a manger,and very repeatedly round the kitchen;she would go into every hole and corner,and peer into everything through her green spectacles:and in these walks it was not always thought pleasant to meet her.Her custom was to move very slowly,with her hands generally clasped behind her back:she rarely spoke to the guests unless she was spoken to,and on such occasions she would not often diverge into general conversation.If any one had aught to say connected with the business of the establishment,she would listen,and then she would make her answers,--often not pleasant in the hearing.
And thus she walked her path through the world,a stern,hard,solemn old woman,not without gusts of passionate explosion;but honest withal,and not without some inward benevolence and true tenderness of heart.Children she had had many,some seven or eight.One or two had died,others had been married;she had sons settled far away from home,and at the time of which we are now speaking but one was left in any way subject to maternal authority.
Adolphe Bauche was the only one of her children of whom much was remembered by the present denizens and hangers-on of the hotel,he was the youngest of the number,and having been born only very shortly before the return of Madame Bauche to Vernet,had been altogether reared there.It was thought by the world of those parts,and rightly thought,that he was his mother's darling--more so than had been any of his brothers and sisters,--the very apple of her eye and gem of her life.At this time he was about twenty-five years of age,and for the last two years had been absent from Vernet--for reasons which will shortly be made to appear.He had been sent to Paris to see something of the world,and learn to talk French instead of the patois of his valley;and having left Paris had come down south into Languedoc,and remained there picking up some agricultural lore which it was thought might prove useful in the valley farms of Vernet.He was now expected home again very speedily,much to his mother's delight.
That she was kind and gracious to her favourite child does not perhaps give much proof of her benevolence;but she had also been kind and gracious to the orphan child of a neighbour;nay,to the orphan child of a rival innkeeper.At Vernet there had been more than one water establishment,but the proprietor of the second had died some few years after Madame Bauche had settled herself at the place.His house had not thrived,and his only child,a little girl,was left altogether without provision.
This little girl,Marie Clavert,La Mere Bauche had taken into her own house immediately after the father's death,although she had most cordially hated that father.Marie was then an infant,and Madame Bauche had accepted the charge without much thought,perhaps,as to what might be the child's ultimate destiny.But since then she had thoroughly done the duty of a mother by the little girl,who had become the pet of the whole establishment,the favourite plaything of Adolphe Bauche,and at last of course his early sweetheart.
And then and therefore there had come troubles at Vernet.Of course all the world of the valley had seen what was taking place and what was likely to take place,long before Madame Bauche knew anything about it.But at last it broke upon her senses that her son,Adolphe Bauche,the heir to all her virtues and all her riches,the first young man in that or any neighbouring valley,was absolutely contemplating the idea of marrying that poor little orphan,Marie Clavert!
That any one should ever fall in love with Marie Clavert had never occurred to Madame Bauche.She had always regarded the child as a child,as the object of her charity,and as a little thing to be looked on as poor Marie by all the world.She,looking through her green spectacles,had never seen that Marie Clavert was a beautiful creature,full of ripening charms,such as young men love to look on.
Marie was of infinite daily use to Madame Bauche in a hundred little things about the house,and the old lady thoroughly recognised and appreciated her ability.But for this very reason she had never taught herself to regard Marie otherwise than as a useful drudge.