La Mere Bauche | Page 5

complaint in the conduct even of Madame Bauche.
In the first place she was deficient in that pleasant smiling softness
which should belong to any keeper of a house of public entertainment.
In her general mode of life she was stern and silent with her guests,
autocratic, authoritative and sometimes contradictory in her house, and
altogether irrational and unconciliatory when any change even for a day
was proposed to her, or when any shadow of a complaint reached her
ears.
Indeed of complaint, as made against the establishment, she was
altogether intolerant. To such she had but one answer. He or she who
complained might leave the place at a moment's notice if it so pleased
them. There were always others ready to take their places. The power
of making this answer came to her from the lowness of her prices; and
it was a power which was very dear to her.

The baths were taken at different hours according to medical advice,
but the usual time was from five to seven in the morning. The dejeuner
or early meal was at nine o'clock, the dinner was at four. After that, no
eating or drinking was allowed in the Hotel Bauche. There was a cafe
in the village, at which ladies and gentlemen could get a cup of coffee
or a glass of eau sucre; but no such accommodation was to be had in
the establishment. Not by any possible bribery or persuasion could any
meal be procured at any other than the authorised hours. A visitor who
should enter the salle a manger more than ten minutes after the last bell
would be looked at very sourly by Madame Bauche, who on all
occasions sat at the top of her own table. Should any one appear as
much as half an hour late, he would receive only his share of what had
not been handed round. But after the last dish had been so handed, it
was utterly useless for any one to enter the room at all.
Her appearance at the period of our tale was perhaps not altogether in
her favour. She was about sixty years of age and was very stout and
short in the neck. She wore her own gray hair, which at dinner was
always tidy enough; but during the 'whole day previous to that hour she
might be seen with it escaping from under her cap in extreme disorder.
Her eyebrows were large and bushy, but those alone would not have
given to her face that look of indomitable sternness which it possessed.
Her eyebrows were serious in their effect, but not so serious as the pair
of green spectacles which she always wore under them. It was thought
by those who had analysed the subject that the great secret of Madame
Bauche's power lay in her green spectacles.
Her custom was to move about and through the whole establishment
every day from breakfast till the period came for her to dress for dinner.
She would visit every chamber and every bath, walk once or twice
round the salle a manger, and very repeatedly round the kitchen; she
would go into every hole and corner, and peer into everything through
her green spectacles: and in these walks it was not always thought
pleasant to meet her. Her custom was to move very slowly, with her
hands generally clasped behind her back: she rarely spoke to the guests
unless she was spoken to, and on such occasions she would not often
diverge into general conversation. If any one had aught to say
connected with the business of the establishment, she would listen, and
then she would make her answers,--often not pleasant in the hearing.

And thus she walked her path through the world, a stern, hard, solemn
old woman, not without gusts of passionate explosion; but honest
withal, and not without some inward benevolence and true tenderness
of heart. Children she had had many, some seven or eight. One or two
had died, others had been married; she had sons settled far away from
home, and at the time of which we are now speaking but one was left in
any way subject to maternal authority.
Adolphe Bauche was the only one of her children of whom much was
remembered by the present denizens and hangers-on of the hotel, he
was the youngest of the number, and having been born only very
shortly before the return of Madame Bauche to Vernet, had been
altogether reared there. It was thought by the world of those parts, and
rightly thought, that he was his mother's darling--more so than had been
any of his brothers and sisters,--the very apple of her eye and gem of
her life. At this time he was about twenty-five years of age, and for