auberge and posthouse— a long low tenement, by
the sign of The Lilies of France—a young Swiss
called Jean Baptiste Constant.

He had been, according to his own account, in
domestic service, and had saved some money.
There was no mystery about him. His appearance
harmonised with the signalement on his
passport, and his papers were perfectly en règle.
He had bought the good-will of the Lilies of
France out of a notary's étude at Avignon,
where it had been deposited for sale by the executors
of Madame the Widow Barrichon, who had
been its hostess ever since the days of the Great
Revolution. Carrier had once set up a guillotine
in her hack yard, and decapitated half a score of
"arestos" there. The villagers declared that,
ever since that hideous day, the water of the well
in the back yard had worn a purple tinge. The
in-coming tenant of the auberge had paid a handsome
price for it—twenty-five thousand francs,
so the gossips of the village said—half down and
half at mortgage on the security of the premises.
A man who could command such an amount of
capital was looked upon as a personage, and the
villagers determined to be very civil to him. The
mayor called on him the day after his arrival at
Marouille. M. le Curé set him down as one of the
future corporation of the fatrigue. Fortunately
for his peace of mind at Marouille, he was, although
a Swiss, a Catholic, hailing from some
canton on the Italian frontier. This was fortunate,
because the Marouillais dislike heretics,
classing them with gipsies, poachers, and escaped
correctionnaires. He was, likewise, a bachelor,
of about twenty-eight apparently, and, although
somewhat swarthy and down-looking, athletic,
vivacious, and, on the whole, a very personable
fellow. He brought neither kith nor kin with
him to his new abiding-place, and the mothers
of the village who had marriageable daughters
looked upon liim favourably from a matrimonial
point of view.

He was a good man of business, and looked
keenly after the main chance; but he was no
niggard. He was willing to be treated, but could
treat, too, in his turn, upon occasion. He soon
drove a very prosperous trade at the Lilies of
France, and, being postmaster, made a good deal
out of the rich English travellers on their way to
Nice. He engaged as housekeeper, a strong old
woman called La Beugleuse. She was not handsome,
and far from amiable, and had a desperate
potency of harsh lungs, whence her name; but
she was very strong, and had a mania for hard
work. She kept the stable-boys and postilions
sober, and up to their duties, and she looked after
the lodgers while Constant served in the bar or
waited on the customers in the billiard-room.
Moreover, she brought a pair of hands with her
in addition to her own. These supplementary
hands belonged to her niece, Valérie, who, in 1825,
was a slut of a girl not more than fifteen years of
age. She was an overgrown loutish kind of a lass,
and yet, for all her long limbs, seemed dwarfed and
stunted about the head and shoulders. Her skin
was coarse; her hands were tanned with hard
labour; her voice was harsh and strident, her
manners were uncouth and boorish. She had
magnificent brown hair, which hung about her
head and neck in a tangled mass, and she had big
blue eyes, at which few people cared to look
admiringly, seeing that they were enshrined in a
sunburnt, dirty face. She was an incorrigible
slattern, and her temper was abominable. Children
are rarely beaten in France; it is looked
upon as a cruel and dastardly thing even to box
a girl's ears; but no one blamed La Beugleuse
when she thrashed her refractory niece with a
knotted rope or a leathern trace, or tied her
up to one of the mangers in the stable. It
seemed natural that Vaurien-Valérie should be
treated like a stubborn horse or mule. She was
held up as a warning and example to the insubordinate
juveniles of the village. "If you don't
mind what's said to you, and give way to your
temper, you will come to be flogged and tied up
in a stable, like Valérie à la Beugleuse." Nobody
cared to inquire what her patronymic was, so
they gave her a share of her aunt's nickname.

Perhaps the education she had received was
not very conducive to the development of feminine
character, or the cultivation of delicate
manners. Her mother had died in bearing her.
Her father had run away from his employment
as a postilion, after drawing a bad number in the
conscription, and had then sold himself as a
substitute in the army. It was in 1815, when
the Emperor was desperately in need of men, and
pressing questions were not asked. The substitute
was three times promoted, through sheer
desperate valour in the field of battle, to the rank
of sergeant; and was as many times reduced to
the ranks for flagrant misconduct. He didn't
drink, he didn't gamble; he was honest, but incurably
insubordinate. Fortunately for the glory
of France, and the interests of society, Valérie's
father got himself killed at the battle of Waterloo,
where he was found by a party of Prussian
foragers under a heap of slain, riddled with
lance wounds, and his arms firmly locked round
those of an English dragoon, whom he had
dragged off his horse, and killed by tearing his
throat in sunder with his teeth.

La Beugleuse took care, after a fashion, of the
little orphan Valérie, who in her cradle bawled
more than fifty ordinary babies. La Beugleuse
was miserably poor. She earned her daily
bread by working in the fields as a day labourer.
When Valérie was old enough—that is to say,
when she was seven— she too went into the fields,
to scare the birds away. La Beugleuse sent her
to the village school, but she would learn nothing
there. They put her on the fool's cap, or
bonnet d'ane; they made her kneel across
sharp rulers, but in vain. Frequently she played
truant, and remained away, among the thickets
on the hill, for days together. The curé preached
against her in church, for she declined to be
catechised, and was the only black sheep among
the snowy little flock whom he prepared for