which drew Mademoiselle Cormon to her country-seat at Prebaudet; for
the five inhabitants of the house bore to this animal a maniacal
affection. She was called Penelope, and had served the family for
eighteen years; but she was kept so carefully and fed with such
regularity that mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for
ten years longer. This beast was the subject of perpetual talk and
occupation; it seemed as if poor Mademoiselle Cormon, having no
children on whom her repressed motherly feelings could expend
themselves, had turned those sentiments wholly on this most fortunate
animal.

The four faithful servants--for Penelope's intelligence raised her to
the level of the other good servants; while they, on the other hand,
had lowered themselves to the mute, submissive regularity of the beast
--went and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible
accuracy of mechanism. But, as they said in their idiom, they had
eaten their white bread first. Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons
nervously agitated by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and
nagging, less by nature than from the need of employing her activity.
Having no husband or children to occupy her, she fell back on petty
details. She talked for hours about mere nothings, on a dozen napkins
marked "Z," placed in the closet before the "O's."

"What can Josette be thinking of?" she exclaimed. "Josette is
beginning to neglect things."

Mademoiselle inquired for eight days running whether Penelope had had
her oats at two o'clock, because on one occasion Jacquelin was a
trifle late. Her narrow imagination spent itself on trifles. A layer
of dust forgotten by the feather-duster, a slice of toast ill-made by