"Your veil! your veil! Take care!"
Bathilde knew what that meant, and would hasten to swathe her lovely face anew.
Certainly, if Master Landry had desired that his establishment should be besieged by crowds of customers, he could easily have gratified his wish: nothing more would have been necessary than to allow his daughter to come to the shop now and then. Bathilde's beauty would have made a sensation, the court and the city would have been stirred to their depths, everyone would have desired to know that plebeian chef-d'œuvre, and, with the inevitable vogue of his place of business, the bath keeper's fortune would have been assured.
But in this respect Bathilde's parents proved that their own honor and their child's virtue were to them treasures more precious than gold.
Some neighbors, knowing how strictly Bathilde had been brought up, said, and with some show of reason, that a mother should be able to watch over her daughter without converting her house into a prison. That to keep a child from knowledge of the world was not the way to protect her from the dangers that are encountered there at every step; and that it was downright barbarity to deprive a girl of all the pleasures suited to her years because it had pleased the Creator to endow her with all those physical qualities which charm and fascinate.
If these or other similar remarks reached Dame Ragonde's ears, it is probable that she paid little heed to them and that they made little impression on her. Immovable in her determination, impassible in her nature, rigorous in her conduct, she made no change whatever in her methods with her daughter.
And as for Master Landry, although he loved Bathilde dearly and was very proud of her, he looked upon his wife as the general whose duty it was to manage the internal economy of his household. As such general, he obeyed her promptly, reserving to himself only the command of the two apprentices employed in his baths.
However, Landry's establishment was prosperous, as were almost all the baths of those days, because they were very few in number.
The neighborhood of Rue Dauphine, which was less thickly populated than Rue Saint-Jacques, already contained some noble mansions and fine houses, occupied by magistrates, members of the Parliament, men of the robe, and rich annuitants. Moreover, the proximity of the Pré-aux-Clercs, which was still a favorite promenade, although some buildings were beginning to be erected there, contributed to attract to Master Landry's baths a more distinguished and more fashionable clientèle, better society, in a word, than the ordinary patrons of his confrère, Master Hugonnet.
Furthermore, although the fascinating Bathilde was concealed from prying eyes, beauty spreads about it a perfume which causes its presence to be divined, and which attracts connoisseurs, even though they are destined to have nothing to show for their pains.