“Nonsense, Mathurine,” exclaimed Geneviève impatiently, with a little toss of her head, “dost thou not understand it will not be so with me. I am Protestant and half English! Thinkest thou I would marry any one, even the greatest ‘milord’ in the world, if he did not make himself agreeable to me myself in the first place? And what is as much to the purpose, perhaps, I have no dot. Great milords are not so ready to marry portionless girls as all that, you silly Mathurine.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle. It is true, I forget often that madame has the English ideas, and it is quite to be understood that mademoiselle should have them too. But what mademoiselle says about having no dot I avow I do not understand. For, à ce que l’on me dit, en Angleterre tout cela est bien différent. I have heard that the demoiselles there, the demoiselles sans dot, je veux dire, se marient souvent très bien,—mais très bien,” with an impressive little pause, “above all, a demoiselle so beautiful, so gracieuse, as mademoiselle.”
“Sometimes perhaps it is so,” said Genevieve with an air of having seriously considered the matter; “still on the whole I would rather take my chance with, than without, a dot. For I am not sure, Mathurine, that I should like to marry an English man, not even a ‘milord.’ Life in England must be often triste, and I imagine also that the husbands there are un peu sévères; expect their wives to amuse themselves enough with the children and the ménage. Bah! that would not suit me. When I marry, it shall not be into that sort of life. I have had enough of it at home. I must have a husband who will let me do as I like; he must adore me, and he must be rich. Oh, so rich!”
“Et beau, mademoiselle,” suggested Mathurine, evidently thinking that as wishing was the order of the day, there was no need to limit the perfections of her young lady’s hero. “Mademoiselle should have un bel homme; mademoiselle who is so pretty.”
“Yes,” agreed Geneviève. “Oh! yes; I should like him to be handsome, though that is not a point of the most important. But every one may not find me pretty, Mathurine? Perhaps, it is only that thou hast taken care of me since I was a baby. Tell me, Mathurine, wast thou pretty in thy youth?” she went on with a sudden change of tone. “Why didst thou never marry? Is it that one has never asked for thee?”
“But no, mademoiselle,” replied the girl, though without the slightest appearance of offence. “One asked for me more than once. But the rich parti was old and ugly, and, one had told me, not too good to his wives—il en avait déjà eu trois—and the young parti was poor, mais très pauvre, and had besides an aged father to support, and I, mademoiselle, had then an aged mother. So what could we do? We waited and waited, but times grew worse instead of better, and other troubles came, and my poor boy and I we lost heart. Then there was a rich widow, a paysanne only, by origin, but her husband had left her his property, who took a fancy to my Etienne, and what prospect had we, that I should keep him? Ah, mademoiselle, dans cette vie, il faut bien souvent marcher sur le caur à deux pieds! The end of it was, Etienne married the widow, and I—enfin, me voilà, mademoiselle, la vieille Mathurine, à votre service.”
“And was Etienne happy with the widow?” asked Geneviève.
“I never heard to the contrary, mademoiselle,” answered Mathurine. “It was many years before I saw him again; then, as it happened one day—it was the neuvaine at the convent close to the village where we lived, and madame, the wife of Etienne, had come with the other fermières of the neighbourhood, and he had driven her over, and as I was saying—”
But Geneviève was not destined to hear the particulars of the meeting of Mathurine and Etienne, for just as the old woman had reached this point her story was interrupted by a sudden cry of warning. It came too late, however. They were crossing the road to enter the allée verte, the ‘Alameda’ of the inhabitants of Hivèritz, when a large open carriage, drawn by two horses, came swiftly round a sharp corner, and in a moment both the young girl and her attendant were thrown to the ground, apparently right under the wheels. There were screams from the carriage, shouts from the by-standers, a general commotion. Mathurine was quickly extricated, still clutching tightly the handle of the little tin soup-can, whose contents lay in a pool on the white dusty road. She declared herself unhurt, and was evidently far more concerned about the fate of her charge than about her own.
“Mais, où est-elle donc, mademoiselle Geneviève, ma petite demoiselle? Ah! qu’est-ce que madame va me dire!” she exclaimed frantically. “Est-elle donc tuée, la chère enfant? La voilà qui ne me ré ponds pas. Dieu, quel horreur!” she continued, as she at last caught sight of Geneviève, pale as death, with eyes closed and apparently quite unconscious, lifted in the arms of a gentleman, who had sprung from the box of the carriage on the first alarm.