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Papa Bouchard

Chapter I

ON a certain day in June, 1901, a cataclysm occurred in the quiet apartment of Mademoiselle Céleste Bouchard, in the Rue Clarisse, the quietest street in the quietest part of Paris. This cataclysm consisted of the simultaneous departure, or rather the levanting, of the entire masculine element in the excellent old lady’s household. And this masculine element had been so admirably trained! Monsieur Paul Bouchard, in particular, ten years his sister’s junior, was reckoned a model man. Mademoiselle could truly say that during Monsieur Bouchard’s fifty-four years of life he had never, until then, given her a moment’s anxiety. All the elderly ladies of the[2] Bouchards’ acquaintance pointed with admiration to Monsieur Paul.

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“Look!” they said; “such a good brother! Mademoiselle boasts that although he is fifty-four years of age he is still as obedient to her as he was at fifteen. So prosperous and respected as an advocate, too!” And all these ladies sighed because they had not succeeded in petticoating a brother or a husband as Mademoiselle Bouchard had petticoated the prosperous and respected Monsieur Paul Bouchard.

Pierre, the husband of Élise, Mademoiselle Bouchard’s maid for thirty years, was as well disciplined as his master, for he 

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