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 Filles-du-Clavaire 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:
Nimois, 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."
BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN
With M. Gillenormand, sorrow was converted into wrath; he was furious at being in despair.
He had all sorts of prejudices and took all sorts of liberties.
One of the facts of which his exterior relief and his internal satisfaction was composed, was, as we have just hinted, that he had remained a brisk spark, and that he passed energetically for such.
This he called having "royal renown." This royal renown sometimes drew down upon him singular windfalls. One day, there was brought to him in a basket, as though it had been a basket of oysters, a stout, newly born boy, who was yelling like the deuce, and duly wrapped in swaddling-clothes, which a servant-maid, dismissed six months previously, attributed to him. M. Gillenormand had, at that time, fully completed his eighty-fourth year.
Indignation and uproar in the establishment. And whom did that bold hussy think she could persuade to believe that? What audacity!
What an abominable calumny!