Brigitte began, from the first, by allowing her brother five hundred
francs a month, and by sailing the household boat at the rate of five
thousand francs a year. She granted to her sister-in-law fifty francs
a month, explaining to her carefully that she herself was satisfied
with forty. To strengthen her despotism by the power of money,
Brigitte laid by the surplus of her own funds. She made, so it was
said in business offices, usurious loans by means of her brother, who
appeared as a money-lender. If, between the years 1813 and 1830,
Brigitte had capitalized sixty thousand francs, that sum can be
explained by the rise in the Funds, and there is no need to have
recourse to accusations more or less well founded, which have nothing
to do with our present history.

From the first days of the marriage, Brigitte subdued the unfortunate
Madame Thuillier with a touch of the spur and a jerk of the bit, both
of which she made her feel severely. A further display of tyranny was
useless; the victim resigned herself at once. Celeste, thoroughly
understood by Brigitte, a girl without mind or education, accustomed
to a sedentary life and a tranquil atmosphere, was extremely gentle by
nature; she was pious in the fullest acceptation of the word; she
would willingly have expiated by the hardest punishments the
involuntary wrong of giving pain to her neighbor. She was utterly
ignorant of life; accustomed to be waited on by her mother, who did
the whole service of the house, for Celeste was unable to make much
exertion, owing to a lymphatic constitution which the least toil
wearied. She was truly a daughter of the people of Paris, where
children, seldom handsome, and of no vigor, the product of poverty and
toil, of homes without fresh air, without freedom of action, without
any of the conveniences of life, meet us at every turn.