Victor himself, who was not the landlord to leave his ostlers to do as
they liked with horses and grain,--many a flirtation, but none that
meant or did any harm; for with all her wildness and love of frolic,
Mademoiselle Victorine never lost her head. Deep down in her heart she
had an ambition which she never confessed even to her aunt Jeanne. She
had read enough romances to believe that it was by no means an
impossible thing that a landlord's daughter should marry a gentleman;
and to marry a gentleman, if she married at all, Victorine was fully
resolved. She never tired of questioning her aunt about the details of
her life in Willan Blaycke's house; and she sometimes gazed for hours at
the gilt-panelled coach, which on all fine days stood in the courtyard
of the Golden Pear, the wonder of all rustics. On the rare occasions
when her aunt went abroad in this fine vehicle, Victorine sat by her
side in an ecstasy of pride and delight. It seemed to her that to be the
owner of such a coach as that, to live in a fine house, and have a fine
gentleman for one's husband must be the very climax of bliss. She
wondered much at her aunt's contentment in her present estate.

"How canst thou bear it, Aunt Jeanne?" she said sometimes. "How canst
thou bear to live as we live here,--to be in the bar-room with the men,
and to sit always in the smoke, after the fine rooms and the company
thou hadst for so long?"

"Bah!" Jeanne would reply. "It's little thou knowest of that fine
company. I had like to die of weariness more often than I was gay in it;
and as for fine rooms, I care nothing for them."

"But thy husband, Aunt Jeanne," Victorine once ventured to say,--"surely
thou wert not weary when he was with thee?"