"If she's mad, I says, shave her head, instead of dressing her hair all day long. I've knowed mad people as foamed at the mouth and rolled their eyes, and would have done themselves a injury but for a strait-jacket; and I've knowed folks in fevers unreasonable enough, but they kept their beds in a dark room, and didn't know their own mothers. Madame's ways is beyond me, I says. _You_ calls it madness: _I_ calls it temper. Tem--per, and no--thing else." Aunt Theresa used to make us laugh by repeating Nurse Brown's sayings, and the little shake of herself with which she emphasized the last sentence. If she had no sympathy for Madame de Vandaleur, she had a double share for the poor lady's husband: "a _good_ soul," as she used to call him. It was in vain that Jeanette spoke of the sweet temper and unselfishness of her mistress "before these terrible days"; her conduct towards her husband then was "enough for" Nurse Brown, so she said. No sooner had the poor gentleman gone off on some errand for her pleasure than she called for him to be with her, and was only to be pacified by a fable of Jeanette's devising, who always said that "the King" had summoned Monsieur de Vandaleur. Jeanette was well aware that, the childless old Duke being dead, her master had succeeded to the title, and she often spoke of him as Monsieur le Duc to his wife, which seems to have pleased the poor lady. When he was absent, Jeanette's ready excuse, "_Eh, Madame! Pour Monsieur le Duc--le Roi l'a fait appeller_," was enough, and she waited patiently for his return. Ever-changing as her whims and fancies were, the poor gentleman sacrificed everything to gratify them. His watch, his rings, his buckles, the lace from his shirt, and all the few trifles secured in their hasty flight, were sold one by one. His face was familiar to the keepers of certain stalls near to where Covent Garden Market now stands. He bought flowers for Madame when he could not afford himself food. He sold his waistcoat, and buttoned his coat across him--and looked thinner than ever. Then the day came when Madame wished, and he could not gratify her wish. Everything was gone. He said, "This will kill me, Jeanette;" and Jeanette believed him. Nurse Brown (according to her own account) assured Jeanette that it would not. "Folk doesn't die of such things, says I." But, in spite of common-sense and experience, Monsieur de Vandaleur did die of grief, or something very like it, within twenty-four hours of the death of his wife, and the birth of their only son. For some years the faithful Jeanette supported this child by her own industry. She was an exquisite laundress, and she throve where the Duke and Duchess would have starved. As the boy grew up she kept him as far as possible from common companions, treated him with as much deference as if he had succeeded to the family honours, and filled his head with traditions of the deserts and dignity of the de Vandaleurs.