Basque and Nicolette — Les Misérables

He had theories. Here is one of them. When a man is passionately fond of women, and has a wife for whom he cares but little, homely, cross, legitimate, perched on the code, there is but one way of procuring peace: let his wife control the purse-strings. This abdication sets him free. Then she grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her fingers covered with verdigris, educates tenants, convokes lawyers, sells, buys, hoards, lavishes, and commits follies as a supreme personal delight. While her husband disdains her, she has the satisfaction of ruining her husband.

He had applied the theory, and it had become his history. His second wife had administered his fortune so that, one fine day, when he found himself a widower, there remained just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole of it in an annuity of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which would expire with him. He had not hesitated. He was not anxious to leave a property behind him. He had seen patrimonies become national property. All that, he said, is the Rue Quincampois. The house in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire still belonged to him.

He had two servants, a male and a female. When a servant entered his establishment, he re-baptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province. His last valet was a big, foundered, short-winded fellow of fifty-five, incapable of running twenty paces; but, as he had been born at Bayonne, he called him Basque. All the female servants were called Nicolette. One day a haughty cook, a cordon bleu, presented herself. How much wages do you want a month? Thirty francs. What is your name? Olympie. You shall have fifty francs, and you shall be called Nicolette.