“But here is your Master,” she objected, pointing to me, and entrenching herself behind my authority.

“Yes, but you are our lady.”

Instead of rejoicing in this, at last I became offended.

“Speak to them,” she advised me. “Are you not their master?”

“I do not know them,” I answered.

“Exactly, but you will know them.”

“They bore me,” I replied.

“Give them a little friendship, and they will cease to weary you.”

“I don’t find it easy,” I said.

“There is poor Fannette, the washerwoman: her hands are covered with cracks and chilblains. Then there is Pierre, the deaf man, who works in our garden.”