Nicole soon perceived that when she married Jacquinot she did not feather her nest very well. The handsome peasant was lazy, careless; in short, a do-nothing in every sense of the term. Three days after her marriage, Nicole sighed when she was congratulated upon her choice. But Frimousset had that rustic cunning which knows how to disguise its inclinations, its faults, beneath an air of good-humor and frankness which deceives many people. His wife was lively, active, hard-working; it required very little time for him to learn her character. Far from thwarting her in anything, Frimousset seemed to be the most docile, the most compliant husband in the village; but he carried his servility to a point which finally irritated Nicole, and that was the very thing he counted upon. For instance, in the morning, while his wife was attending to the housework, Jacquinot, after eating a hearty breakfast, would say to her: “What do you want me to do now, Nicole?” And Nicole would reply quickly: “It seems to me that there’s work enough to do! There’s our field to plow, and the stones and stumps to be taken out of the piece by the road, and the garden to be planted. Ain’t that work enough?” “Yes, yes!” Frimousset would reply, shaking his head; “I know well enough that it ain’t work that’s lacking; but where shall I begin--in the field, or the pasture, or the garden? I am waiting for you to tell me; you know very well that I want to do just what you want me to.” “My word! what nonsense! Don’t you know enough to know what there’s most hurry about?” “Why no! Don’t I tell you that I want you to give me orders as to what I shall do; I want to do my best to please you, my little wife.” “Do whatever you want to, and let me alone.” Frimousset would ask no further questions; when by dint of being submissive he had irritated his wife, she never failed to say: “Do whatever you please and let me alone.” Thereupon Nicole’s husband would go off to the wine-shop and pass the day there. Nicole would look in vain for him in the pasture and the garden, and at night, when he came home to supper she would ask: “Where on earth have you been working? I couldn’t find you anywhere.” And Jacquinot would reply in a cajoling tone: “Faith, you wouldn’t tell me what work to begin on, and I was afraid of doing something wrong; I didn’t want to do anything without your orders.” With a man of Frimousset’s stamp, comfort, when it exists, soon gives place to straitened circumstances, and then to poverty; among the small as among the great, there is no fortune which is large enough to withstand disorder. After five years of married life, Nicole was obliged to sell her field and her pasture, all because Monsieur Jacquinot never knew where to begin when it was a question of working.