and chests; in short, all the needed household utensils. To accomplish
this, they go into service in Peronne, Abbeville, Amiens, and other
towns, where they are tire-women, wash up glasses, clean plates, fold
linen, and carry up the dinner, or anything that there is to be
carried. They are all married as soon as they possess something else
besides that which they naturally bring to their husbands. These women
are the best housewives, because they understand the business and
everything else thoroughly. One belonging to Azonville, which is the
land of which I am lord by inheritance, having heard speak of Paris,
where the people did not put themselves out of the way for anyone, and
where one could subsist for a whole day by passing the cook's shops,
and smelling the steam, so fattening was it, took it into her head to
go there. She trudged bravely along the road, and arrived with a
pocket full of emptiness. There she fell in, at the Porte St. Denise,
with a company of soldiers, placed there for a time as a vidette, for
the Protestants had assumed a dangerous attitude. The sergeant seeing
this hooded linnet coming, stuck his headpiece on one side,
straightened his feather, twisted his moustache, cleared his throat,
rolled his eyes, put his hand on his hips, and stopped the Picardian
to see if her ears were properly pierced, since it was forbidden to
girls to enter otherwise into Paris. Then he asked her, by way of a
joke, but with a serious face, what brought her there, he pretending
to believe she had come to take the keys of Paris by assault. To which
the poor innocent replied, that she was in search of a good situation,
and had no evil intentions, only desiring to gain something.

"'Very well; I will employ you,' said the wag. 'I am from Picardy, and
will get you taken in here, where you will be treated as a queen would
often like to be, and you will be able to make a good thing of it.'