Read "The Wicker-Work Woman" by Anatole France online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
As soon as he had removed from Madame Bergeret, deposed, the management of his house, M. Bergeret himself took command, and a very bad job he made of it. Yet in excuse it should be said that the maid Marie never carried out his orders, since she never understood them. But since action is the essential condition of life and one can by no means avoid it, Marie acted, and was led by her natural gifts into the most unlucky decisions and the most noxious deeds. Sometimes, however, the light of her genius was quenched by drunkenness. One day, having drunk all the spirits of wine kept for the lamp, she lay stretched unconscious on the kitchen tiles for forty hours. Her awaking was always terrible, and every movement she made was followed by catastrophe. She succeeded in doing what had been beyond the powers of anyone else-in splitting the marble chimney-piece by dashing a candlestick on it.
She took to cooking all the food in a frying-pan, amid deafening clamour and poisonous smells, and nothing that she served was eatable.