He had theories. Here is one of them: “When a man is passionately fond
of women, and when he has himself a wife for whom he cares but little,
who is homely, cross, legitimate, with plenty of rights, perched on the
code, and jealous at need, there is but one way of extricating himself
from the quandry and of procuring peace, and that is to let his wife
control the purse-strings. This abdication sets him free. Then his wife
busies herself, grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her
fingers covered with verdigris in the process, undertakes the education
of half-share tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers,
presides over notaries, harangues scriveners, visits limbs of the law,
follows lawsuits, draws up leases, dictates contracts, feels herself
the sovereign, sells, buys, regulates, promises and compromises, binds
fast and annuls, yields, concedes and retrocedes, arranges,
disarranges, hoards, lavishes; she commits follies, a supreme and
personal delight, and that consoles her. While her husband disdains
her, she has the satisfaction of ruining her husband.” This theory M.
Gillenormand had himself applied, and it had become his history. His
wife—the second one—had administered his fortune in such a manner that,
one fine day, when M. Gillenormand found himself a widower, there
remained to him just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole
of it in an annuity of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which
would expire with him. He had not hesitated on this point, not being
anxious to leave a property behind him. Besides, he had noticed that
patrimonies are subject to adventures, and, for instance, become
_national property_; he had been present at the avatars of consolidated
three per cents, and he had no great faith in the Great Book of the
Public Debt. “All that’s the Rue Quincampois!” he said. His house in
the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire belonged to him, as we have already
stated. He had two servants, “a male and a female.” When a servant
entered his establishment, M. Gillenormand re-baptized him. He bestowed
on the men the name of their province: Nîmois, Comtois, Poitevin,
Picard. His last valet was a big, foundered, short-winded fellow of
fifty-five, who was incapable of running twenty paces; but, as he had
been born at Bayonne, M. Gillenormand called him _Basque_. All the
female servants in his house were called Nicolette (even the Magnon, of
whom we shall hear more farther on). One day, a haughty cook, a cordon
bleu, of the lofty race of porters, presented herself. “How much wages
do you want a month?” asked M. Gillenormand. “Thirty francs.” “What is
your name?” “Olympie.” “You shall have fifty francs, and you shall be
called Nicolette.”