Now, Aunt Gabrielle was a character. She was the living repertory of folk-songs, legends, and customs. People came from everywhere to consult her when they wanted to know how such and such a thing should be done. Perhaps you believe that etiquette is peculiar to palaces. Most assuredly not. In my day a wedding had more than a thousand equally important formalities. My good aunt, who was the oracle of these forms, had never made use of them for herself.
She was an old maid, born at Belle-Isle-en-Mer under Louis XV., and was a distant cousin of ours. We have relationships in Brittany which can be expressed in no language, they are so remote. My father, who never thought of himself until everybody else had been provided for, had brought out a whole tribe of poor relatives with him to St. Jean Brévelay. I think, however, that Aunt Gabrielle was an exception. She gave more than she received. She was our cook, I beg you to believe, and a most excellent one too. She was active, laborious, always equal to the expedients of her profession, always bright and contented, full of delicate attentions for everybody, particularly for Marguerite (my mother), her best beloved; but my good mother was everybody's best beloved. I have never in my life known a woman to be so universally cherished.
Aunt Gabrielle had only two faults: she spoiled children horribly, and she gave the poor whatever she could lay her hands on. It often happened that after a too liberal distribution of supplies among her beggars, she would set before us at dinner a dish so ridiculously out of proportion to the requirements of our appetites that she would herself burst into a laugh as she looked at it. We all joined in the laugh, which seemed to make us forget how hungry we were. She was the factotum of the house, and was just as exacting and despotic as she was kind.
On that night she was greatly excited; and when she came up to kiss my mother, instead of folding her in her arms as she was in the habit of doing, she whispered something to her with an expression of importance and anger.
"Calm yourself, Gabrielle; calm yourself," my mother said to her several times, and I felt her hand tremble.
"No, my dear, I cannot help it! And if you do not choose to do it, I will do it myself."
"You will do nothing of the sort," said my mother. "And you will remember that I am the mistress in my own house."
She pushed her gently, that the others might move along; but Aunt Gabrielle joined the women who were going out, several of whom stopped to speak to her. They were all making gestures of indignation as they looked at poor Marion, who had withdrawn into the darkest corner of the hall, and there stood with her head down and her face turned away from them.
Finally they seemed to have taken a resolution, and they moved toward her as though to drive her away; but they were stopped by these few words, uttered in a low tone, and at which all the conversations ceased at once.