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Here is my confession, for I would not lose your esteem nor my own for all the treasures of earth. I wished to know who you are. I have just returned from Havre, where I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her to Ingouville.
What shall I add? Read between the lines of this letter, monsieur, the great effort which I am making: permit me to offer you my hand, that of a friend, ah! a true friend. Your servant, O. d'Este M. P.S. If you do me the favor to answer this letter address your reply, if you please, to Mademoiselle F. Cochet, "poste restante," Havre.
But Gaubertin's fixed idea of acquiring Les Aigues at the old lady's death led him to depreciate the value of the magnificent estate in the matter of its ostensible revenues. Mademoiselle Cochet, a sharer in the scheme, was also to share the profits. The result of having few wants in her old age seemed, to her mind, a proof of the honesty and uprightness of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet.
Neither Cochet nor Gaubertin, in spite of their great familiarity with the mistress, was ever admitted to her table; the leading lady of the Academie Royale retained, to her last hour, her sense of etiquette, her style of dress, her rouge and her heeled slippers, her carriage, her servants, and the majesty of her deportment.
All that Modeste wanted of her accomplice was to put certain letters into the post at Havre and to bring some back which would be directed to herself, Francoise Cochet. The treaty concluded, Modeste wrote a polite note to Dauriat, publisher of the poems of Canalis, asking, in the interest of that great poet, for some particulars about him, among others if he were married.
The annual pickings of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet, their wages and perquisites, became so large that the most affectionate relative could not possibly have been more devoted than they to their kindly mistress. There is really no describing how a swindler cossets his dupe. A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved daughter as the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow.
Inquiries which he had made in the village went to show that no one had ever been able to explain their existence and that the Abbe Cochet, in his valuable little book on Etretat, had also tried in vain to solve this little puzzle. But Isidore knew what the learned Norman archaeologist did not know, namely, that the same two letters figured in the document, on the line containing the indications.
In 1811 Mademoiselle Cochet, whom Soudry consulted about all his affairs, strongly objected to the renewal of the lease, making the house uninhabitable, she declared, with barracks. The town of Soulanges, assisted by the department, then erected a building for the gendarmerie in a street running at right angles from the town-hall.
By a phenomenon not in the least rare, which the vanity of mothers and authors carries on at all moments under our very eyes in behalf of their literary works or their marriageable daughters, the late Mademoiselle Cochet was, at the end of seven years, so completely buried under Madame Soudry, the mayoress, that she not only did not remember her past, but she actually believed herself a well-bred woman.
Was it a chance coincidence: Impossible. Well, then ? Les Origines d'Etretat. The Abbe Cochet seems to conclude, in the end, that the two letters are the initials of a passer-by. The revelations now made prove the fallacy of the theory. An idea suddenly occurred to him, an idea so reasonable, so simple that he did not doubt its correctness for a second.
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