It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants of the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in Clavering, should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first appearance of the Park family in church, madame noted every article of toilet which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins, and took a survey of the attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted to them. We fear that Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterward, she had managed for herself an interview with Lady Clavering's confidential attendant in the housekeeper's room at the Park; and her cards in French and English, stating that she received the newest fashions from Paris, from her correspondent Madame Victorine, and that she was in the custom of making court and ball dresses for the nobility and gentry of the shire, were in the possession of Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, and favorably received, as she was happy to hear, by those ladies.
Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering's lady, became soon a great frequenter of Madame Fribsby's drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at the milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes, and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner, whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she found much more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss Amory's maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked as hard as any factory girl by that inexorable little muse, her mistress.
The muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and a poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her maid, having a taste in dress-making—to which art she had been an apprentice at Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche's service there—was kept from morning till night altering and remodeling Miss Amory's habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task-mistress. The girl was of respectable English parents. There are many of our people, colonists of Paris, who have seen better days, who are not quite ruined, who do not quite live upon charity, and yet can not get on without it; and as her father was a cripple incapable of work, and her return home would only increase the burthen and add to the misery of the family, poor Pincott was fain to stay where she could maintain herself, and spare a little relief to her parents.
Our muse, with the candor which distinguished her, never failed to remind her attendant of the real state of matters. "I should send you away, Pincott, for you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are failing you, and you are always crying and sniveling and wanting the doctor; but I wish that your parents at home should be supported, and I go on enduring you for their sake, mind," the dear Blanche would say to her timid little attendant. Or, "Pincott, your wretched appearance and slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine; and I think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little cheerful;" or, "Pincott, I can't bear, even for the sake of your starving parents, that you should tear my hair out of my head in that manner; and I will thank you to write to them and say that I dispense with your services." After which sort of speeches, and after keeping her for an hour trembling over her hair, which the young lady loved to have combed, as she perused one of her favorite French novels, she would go to bed at one o'clock, and say, "Pincott, you may kiss me. Good night. I should like you to have the pink dress ready for the morning." And so with a blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round and go to sleep.
The muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and availed herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early indeed to get her mistress's task done; and had to appear next day with the same red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory by their want of gayety, and caused the mistress to be so angry, because the servant persisted in being and looking unwell and unhappy. Not that Blanche ever thought she was a hard mistress. Indeed, she made quite a friend of Pincott, at times, and wrote some very pretty verses about the lonely little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away. Our beloved Blanche was a superior being, and expected to be waited upon as such. And I do not know whether there are any other ladies in this world, who treat their servants or dependents so, but it may be that there are such, and that the tyranny which they exercise over their subordinates, and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft voice, and a well-bred simper, are as cruel as those which a slave-driver administers with an oath and a whip.
But Blanche was a muse—a delicate little creature, quite tremulous with excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion; and who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which caused them to be froisséd so easily? You crush a butterfly by merely touching it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a muse.
So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in stitching, hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; in reading to her when in bed—for the girl was mistress of the two languages, and had a sweet voice and manner—could take no share in Madame Fribsby's soirées, nor indeed was she much missed, or considered of sufficient consequence to appear at their entertainments.
But there was another person connected with the Clavering establishment, who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner. This was the chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon formed an intimacy.
Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons of the French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Clavering were not so favorably impressed by Monsieur Alcide's manners and appearance, as that gentleman might have desired that they should be. He walked among them quite unsuspiciously upon the afternoon of a summer day, when his services were not required at the house, in his usual favorite costume, namely, his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet waistcoat, with blue glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a very large and decided check pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his jean-boots, with tips of shiny leather—these, with a gold embroidered cap, and a richly-gilt cane, or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency, formed his usual holiday costume, in which he flattered himself there was nothing remarkable (unless, indeed, the beauty of his person should attract observation), and in which he considered that he exhibited the appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian ton.