“Well, then, you see! Now give me a kiss for good-night.”
She did kiss me but I could hear her muttering to herself that it was hard luck for her to have two such wooden heads in one family.
“Well, pound the other one as much as you please, but leave me in peace.”
“He will get his share, never fear, and you too,” she answered; and then the next day it began all over again, so that I really thought on the whole I had more than was due to me.
For the first few days I was in clover, and every one petted and spoiled me; even Florimond, who overwhelmed me with attentions greater than I desired or deserved, for I saw that Martine was keeping her eye on him. Glodie was always twittering around me; I had the most comfortable chair; I was helped first at table, and when I spoke every one listened in respectful silence.
It was all perfectly delightful, but I felt that I could not stand much more; it made me restless, and I kept going up and down stairs all day long to and from my garret. This, naturally, got on everybody’s nerves, and Martine, who is by no means the most patient of women, was nearly beside herself when she heard the stairs creak for the hundredth time under my feet. If it had been summer, I should have gone out and roamed about the country, but as it was I had to do my roaming indoors. It was a cold early autumn, the fields were damp and misty, and it rained from morning till night; so I was shut up in the house, and not my house, Heaven help me!
I hated all the furniture and ornaments, for Florimond’s taste in such things is stupid and pretentious, and it made me so uncomfortable that my fingers fairly itched to move things round, or alter them, but of course, that would never do with the master of the house standing by, and the slightest criticism was a mortal offense. In the dining-room there was a ewer decorated with a simpering lady, her tiresome lover and two cooing doves which made me ill whenever I looked at it. I told Florimond it made the victuals stick in my throat, and begged him to take it away at mealtimes; but his notion of art was ornamented confectionery and he greatly admired this piece, so he refused, as, of course, he had a perfect right to do; but the faces I made amused the whole household.
What was to be done? Laugh at me for an old fool? By all means; but at night, in my garret, when the rain was on the roof, I turned and twisted in my bed, not daring to shake the house by walking up and down with my heavy tread. One night as I sat up there, bare-legged, meditating on these things, a thought came into my head that sooner or later, by hook or by crook, I must rebuild my house, and after that I felt happier; but I kept my little plan to myself and did not breathe a word of it to my children, for I knew what they would say.
“Where was the money to come from?”
Alas! we are no longer in the times of Orpheus and Amphion, when stones built themselves into walls as if to the sound of music; there is no such charm to raise them now unless it be the chink of money bags, and that was always faint with me and now completely inaudible.