The man hesitated, seized with a sudden timidity, in view of what he had to say.
"Only what?" asked the countess, after a silence that increased the man's embarrassment.
The latter gripped his cap more tightly, turned it in his fat fingers, rested more heavily on the ground, and, making a bold plunge, exclaimed:
"Well, it is this. I wanted to say to Madame the Countess that the wages do not correspond with the place. They are too low. With the best will in the world it would be impossible to make ends meet. Madame the Countess ought to give a little more."
"You forget, my friend, that you are lodged, heated, lighted; that you have vegetables and fruits; that I give a dozen eggs a week and a quart of milk a day. It is enormous."
"Ah, Madame the Countess gives milk and eggs? And she furnishes light?"
And he looked at his wife as if to ask her advice, at the same time murmuring:
"Indeed, that is something! One cannot deny it. That is not bad."
The woman stammered:
"Surely that helps out a little."