“May be M. Rodin means to buy the estate. Though, to be sure, that stout lady who came from Paris last week on purpose to see the chateau appeared to have a great wish for it.”
At these words the bailiff began to laugh with a sly look.
“What is there to laugh at, Dupont?” asked his wife, a very good creature, but not famous for intelligence or penetration.
“I laugh,” answered Dupont, “to think of the face and figure of that enormous woman: with such a look, who the devil would call themselves Madame de la Sainte-Colombe—Mrs. Holy Dove? A pretty saint, and a pretty dove, truly! She is round as a hogshead, with the voice of a town-crier; has gray moustachios like an old grenadier, and without her knowing it, I heard her say to her servant: ‘Stir your stumps, my hearty!’—and yet she calls herself Sainte-Colombe!”
“How hard on her you are, Dupont; a body don’t choose one’s name. And, if she has a beard, it is not the lady’s fault.”
“No—but it is her fault to call herself Sainte-Colombe. Do you imagine it her true name? Ah, my poor Catherine, you are yet very green in some things.”
“While you, my poor Dupont, are well read in slander! This lady seems very respectable. The first thing she asked for on arriving was the chapel of the Castle, of which she had heard speak. She even said that she would make some embellishments in it; and, when I told her we had no church in this little place, she appeared quite vexed not to have a curate in the village.”
“Oh, to be sure! that’s the first thought of your upstarts—to play the great lady of the parish, like your titled people.”
“Madame de la Sainte-Colombe need not play the great lady, because she is one.”
“She! a great lady? Oh, lor’!”