Pride one of the seven cardinal sins

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD COMMANDER.

Elle avait un vice, l'orgueil, qui lui tenait lieu de toutes les qualites.

She had one fault, pride, which, in her, answered in place of all the virtues.

Commander Bernard, a resident of Paris, after having served under the Empire in the Marine Corps, and under the Restoration as a lieutenant in the navy, was retired about the year 1830, with the brevet rank of captain.

Honourably mentioned again and again for his daring exploits in the maritime engagements of the East Indian war, and subsequently recognised as one of the bravest soldiers in the Russian campaign, M. Bernard, the most unassuming and upright of men, with the kindest heart in the world, lived quietly and frugally upon his modest pension, in a little apartment on one of the least frequented streets of the Batignolles.

An elderly woman, named Madame Barbancon, had kept house for him ten years or more, and, though really very fond of him, led him a rather hard life at times, for the worthy female, who had an extremely high temper and a very despotic disposition, was very fond of reminding her employer that she had sacrificed an enviable social position to serve him.

The real truth was, Madame Barbancon had long acted as assistant in the establishment of a well-known midwife,—an experience which furnished her with material for an inexhaustible stock of marvellous stories, her great favourite being her adventure with a masked lady who, with her assistance, had brought a lovely girl baby into the world, a child Madame Barbancon had taken care of for two years, but which had been claimed by a stranger at the expiration of that time.

Four or five years after this memorable event, Madame Barbancon decided to resign her practice and assume the twofold functions of nurse and housekeeper.

About this time Commander Bernard, who was suffering greatly from the reopening of several old wounds, needed a nurse, and was so well pleased with Madame Barbancon's skill that he asked her to enter his service.

"You will have a pretty easy time of it, Mother Barbancon," the veteran said to her. "I am not hard to live with, and we shall get along comfortably together."

Madame Barbancon promptly accepted the offer, elevated herself forthwith to the position of Commander Bernard's dame de confiance, and slowly but surely became a veritable servant-mistress. Indeed, seeing the angelic patience with which the commander endured this domestic tyranny, one would have taken the old naval officer for some meek-spirited rentier, instead of one of the bravest soldiers of the Empire.

Commander Bernard was passionately fond of gardening, and lavished any amount of care and attention upon a little arbour, constructed by his own hands and covered with clematis, hop-vines, and honeysuckle, where he loved to sit after his frugal dinner and smoke his pipe and think of his campaigns and his former companions in arms. This arbour marked the limits of the commander's landed possessions, for though very small, the garden was divided into two parts. The portion claimed by Madame Barbancon aspired only to be useful; the other, of which the veteran took entire charge, was intended to please the eye only....