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Updated: June 17, 2025
This house, hired in the first instance, was subsequently bought by a man named Sauviat, a hawker or peddler who, from 1786 to 1793, travelled the country over a radius of a hundred and fifty miles around Auvergne, exchanging crockery of a common kind, plates, dishes, glasses, in short, the necessary articles of the poorest households, for old iron, brass, and lead, or any metal under any shape it might lurk in.
When Madame Sauviat and Aline saw her they were struck with the change in her countenance; the hope of doing good in the region she now owned gave her already an appearance of happiness.
When some stranger, surprised or interested by the building, stopped before it and gazed at the second story, old Sauviat would poke his head beyond the overhanging projection, certain that he should see his daughter at her window. Then he would retreat into the shop rubbing his hands and saying to his wife in the Auvergne vernacular: "Hey! old woman; they're admiring your daughter!"
Appealed to by Madame Sauviat, the rector, who had wished not to seem intrusive, came henceforth very frequently to visit Madame Graslin; he needed only to be warned that her soul was sick. This true pastor took care to pay his visits at the hour when Veronique came out to sit at the corner of the terrace with her child, both in deep mourning.
Sauviat never bought any article without the certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per cent profit. To relieve himself of the necessity of keeping books and accounts, he bought and sold for cash only. He had, moreover, such a perfect memory that the cost of any article, were it only a farthing, remained in his mind year after year, together with its accrued interest.
These words were said by every pair of lips in Limoges in the course of a single evening, in the salons of the upper classes, in the kitchens, in the shops, in the streets, in the suburbs, and before long throughout the whole surrounding country. But to whom? No one could answer. Limoges had a mystery. On the return of old Sauviat Graslin paid his first evening visit at half-past nine o'clock.
"Couldn't you understand anything she said?" asked Veronique. "No; but she kept saying over and over, and that's why I remember it, My dear brother!" Veronique took her mother's arm and led her son by the hand, but she had scarcely gone a dozen steps before her strength gave way. "What is the matter? what has happened?" said the others, who now came up, to Madame Sauviat.
"She was there," said Madame Sauviat; "for ten days she did not leave it; but to-day she insisted on getting up to take a last look at the landscape." "I can understand that she wanted to bid farewell to her great creation," said Monsieur de Grandville; "but she risked expiring on this terrace." "Monsieur Roubaud told us not to thwart her," said Madame Sauviat.
Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by Nature expressly for maternity. If this strong girl were not earlier married, the fault must be attributed to the Harpagon "no dowry" her father practised, though he never read Moliere.
"As you please, father," she said, lowering her eyes. "Yes, we'll marry her!" cried stout Madame Sauviat, smiling. "Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?" said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."
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