"Take care," she said in one of her most serious tones. "See, how from want of careful account-keeping you already suspect others; before this evening is here you will be ready to accuse them. It always is so. The want of order engenders suspicion, and it is easier to doubt the probity of others than one's own memory. No lock can prevent that, my child, because none can shelter you from the results of your own miscalculations. There is no safeguard for the woman at the head of a household, like a housekeeping-book which serves to warn her day by day, and bears faithful witness at the end of the month. I have brought you such a one as your uncle used to give me."
She drew it from her bag, and presented it to Marcelle.
It was an account-book bound in parchment, the cover of which was separated like a portfolio into three pockets, destined for receipts, bills, and memoranda. The book itself was divided into several parts, distinguished one from the other by markers corresponding to the different species of expenditure, so that a glance was sufficient to form an estimate, not only of the sum total, but also of the amount of expenditure, in each separate branch.
The whole formed a domestic budget as clear as it was complete, in which each portion of the government service had its open account regulated by the supreme comptroller.
M. Roubert, who had been during his life a species of unknown Franklin, solely occupied in the endeavour to make business and, opinions agree with good sense, had written above, each chapter a borrowed or unpublished maxim to serve as warning to its possessor. At the beginning of the book the following words were traced in red ink:—
"Economy is the true source of independence and liberality."
Farther on, at the head of the division destined to expenses of the table:—
"A Wise man has always three cooks, who season the simplest food: Sobriety, Exercise, and Content."
Above the chapter devoted to benevolence:—
"Give as thou hast received"