She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet who had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to the royal cabinet.So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a sort of reflection of the Court.Thirion used to tell her about the lords, and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced and saw passing to and fro.The girl, brought up at the gates of the Tuileries, had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and adopted the dogma of passive obedience to authority.She had sagely judged that her husband, by ranging himself on the side of the d'Esgrignons, would find favor with Mme.la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and with two powerful families on whose influence with the King the Sieur Thirion could depend at an opportune moment.Camusot might get an appointment at the first opportunity within the jurisdiction of Paris, and afterwards at Paris itself.That promotion, dreamed of and longed for at every moment, was certain to have a salary of six thousand francs attached to it, as well as the alleviation of living in her own father's house, or under the Camusots' roof, and all the advantages of a father's fortune on either side.If the adage, "Out of sight is out of mind," holds good of most women, it is particularly true where family feeling or royal or ministerial patronage is concerned.The personal attendants of kings prosper at all times; you take an interest in a man, be it only a man in livery, if you see him every day.
Mme.Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage, had taken a little house in the Rue du Cygne.Furnished lodgings there were none;the town was not enough of a thoroughfare, and the Camusots could not afford to live at an inn like M.Michu.So the fair Parisian had no choice for it but to take such furniture as she could find; and as she paid a very moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit a certain quaintness of detail was not wanting.It was built against a neighboring house in such a fashion that the side with only one window in each story, gave upon the street, and the front looked out upon a yard where rose-bushes and buckhorn were growing along the wall on either side.On the farther side, opposite the house, stood a shed, a roof over two brick arches.A little wicket-gate gave entrance into the gloomy place (made gloomier still by the great walnut-tree which grew in the yard), but a double flight of steps, with an elaborately-wrought but rust-eaten handrail, led to the house door.Inside the house there were two rooms on each floor.The dining-room occupied that part of the ground floor nearest the street, and the kitchen lay on the other side of a narrow passage almost wholly taken up by the wooden staircase.Of the two first-floor rooms, one did duty as the magistrate's study, the other as a bedroom, while the nursery and the servants' bedroom stood above in the attics.There were no ceilings in the house; the cross-beams were simply white-washed and the spaces plastered over.Both rooms on the first floor and the dining-room below were wainscoted and adorned with the labyrinthine designs which taxed the patience of the eighteenth century joiner; but the carving had been painted a dingy gray most depressing to behold.
The magistrate's study looked as though it belonged to a provincial lawyer; it contained a big bureau, a mahogany armchair, a law student's books, and shabby belongings transported from Paris.Mme.
Camusot's room was more of a native product; it boasted a blue-and-white scheme of decoration, a carpet, and that anomalous kind of furniture which appears to be in the fashion, while it is simply some style that has failed in Paris.As to the dining-room, it was nothing but an ordinary provincial dining-room, bare and chilly, with a damp, faded paper on the walls.
In this shabby room, with nothing to see but the walnut-tree, the dark leaves growing against the walls, and the almost deserted road beyond them, a somewhat lively and frivolous woman, accustomed to the amusements and stir of Paris, used to sit all day long, day after day, and for the most part of the time alone, though she received tiresome and inane visits which led her to think her loneliness preferable to empty tittle-tattle.If she permitted herself the slightest gleam of intelligence, it gave rise to interminable comment and embittered her condition.She occupied herself a great deal with her children, not so much from taste as for the sake of an interest in her almost solitary life, and exercised her mind on the only subjects which she could find --to wit, the intrigues which went on around her, the ways of provincials, and the ambitions shut in by their narrow horizons.So she very soon fathomed mysteries of which her husband had no idea.As she sat at her window with a piece of intermittent embroidery work in her fingers, she did not see her woodshed full of faggots nor the servant busy at the wash tub; she was looking out upon Paris, Paris where everything is pleasure, everything is full of life.She dreamed of Paris gaieties, and shed tears because she must abide in this dull prison of a country town.She was disconsolate because she lived in a peaceful district, where no conspiracy, no great affair would ever occur.She saw herself doomed to sit under the shadow of the walnut-tree for some time to come.
