In the first place, Flore
kept the house and managed all its business. Jean-Jacques left
everything to the crab-girl so completely that life without her would
have seemed to him not only difficult, but impossible. In every way,
this woman had become the one need of his existence; she indulged all
his fancies, for she knew them well. He loved to see her bright face
always smiling at him,--the only face that had ever smiled upon him,
the only one to which he could look for a smile. This happiness, a
purely material happiness, expressed in the homely words which come
readiest to the tongue in a Berrichon household, and visible on the
fine countenance of the young woman, was like a reflection of his own
inward content. The state into which Jean-Jacques was thrown when
Flore's brightness was clouded over by some passing annoyance revealed
to the girl her power over him, and, to make sure of it, she sometimes
liked to use it. Using such power means, with women of her class,
abusing it. The Rabouilleuse, no doubt, made her master play some of
those scenes buried in the mysteries of private life, of which Otway
gives a specimen in the tragedy of "Venice Preserved," where the scene
between the senator and Aquilina is the realization of the
magnificently horrible. Flore felt so secure of her power that,
unfortunately for her, and for the bachelor himself, it did not occur
to her to make him marry her.
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