in the kitchen, a dingy, unswept, uninviting place, as are most
farm-house kitchens in France. These old ladies were respectively
mother-in-law and aunt of the farmer, whose wife, the real mistress of
the house, soon came in. This tall, stout, florid, brawny-armed woman
was evidently what French folks call _une maitresse femme_, a first-rate
housewife and manager; a somewhat awe-inspiring person she looked as she
stood before us, arms akimbo, her short coarse serge skirt showing shoes
well acquainted with stable and neat-house, one dirty blue cotton apron
worn over another equally dirty. Now, my hostess, as I have said, wanted
to purchase some poultry for the table, and here comes in the moral of
my story. Vainly the lady begged and begged again for a couple of
chickens. "But we want them for our Parisians," the three farming women
reiterated, one echoing the other. "Our Parisians, our Parisians," the
words were repeated a dozen times. And as was explained to me
afterwards, "our Parisians," for whom the pick of the poultry yard was
being reserved, were the two sons of the rather forbidding-looking
matron before us, young gentlemen being educated in a Paris Lycee, and
both of them destined for the learned professions!

This side of rural life, this ambition, akin to what we see taking quite
another form among ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize.
Shocking indeed were the miserliness and materialism of such existences
but for the element of self-denial, this looking ahead for those to
follow after. How differently, for instance, the farm-house and its
group must have appeared, but for the evident pride and hopes centred in
_nos Parisiens_, who knows?--perhaps youths destined to attain the first
rank in official or political callings!

The farther door of the smoke-dried kitchen opened on to the farm-yard,
around which were stables and neat-houses. In the latter the mistress of