文档介绍：A SIMPLE SOUL
A SIMPLE SOUL
By Gustave Flaubert
1
A SIMPLE SOUL
CHAPTER I
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied
Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework,
washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made
the butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was by
no means an agreeable person.
Madame Aubain had married ely youth without any money, who
died in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children and a
number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the farm of Toucques
and the farm of Geffosses, the e of which barely amounted to 5,000
francs; then she left her house in Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less
pretentious one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the
market-place. This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a
passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The interior was so
unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated
the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw
armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against
the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was
covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the
yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a tapestry armchair.
The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled
musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden.
On the first floor was Madame's bed-chamber, a large room papered in
a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the
costume of a dandy. municated with a smaller room, in which there
were two little cribs, without any mattresses. Next, came the parlour
(always closed), filled with furniture covered with sheets. Then a hall,
which led to the study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves
o