the gate of Blangy, in return for one hundred days' work (a delicate
regard for his feelings which was little understood), and allowed him
to stay at Les Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought
him one of the best fellows in Burgundy.

Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle's women, particularly
with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady's maid, though she was ugly, like
all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with
Mademoiselle Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the
fortunate gendarme mentioned in Blondet's letter, still looked askance
at Tonsard after the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut
wardrobe, the bedstead with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments
about the bedroom were doubtless the result of the said laughter.

Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to
him, "I've bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks
ever give us anything? Are one hundred days' work nothing? It has cost
me three hundred francs, and the land is all stones." But that speech
never got beyond the regions of his own class.

Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
there as he could,--getting a day's work out of this one and that one,
gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the
sash of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to
build the fatal cottage.