XXV
One morning, after a night passed by her in turning over and over in her mind all her despairing, hate-ridden thoughts, Germinie went to the creamery for her four sous’ worth of milk and found in the back-shop three or four maids from the neighborhood engaged in “taking an eye-opener.” They were seated at a table, gossiping and sipping liqueurs.
“Aha!” said Adèle, striking the table with her glass; “you here already, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil?”
“What’s this?” said Germinie, taking Adèle’s glass; “I’d like some myself.”
“Are you so thirsty as all that this morning? Brandy and absinthe, that’s all!—my soldier boy’s tap, you know—he never drank anything else. It’s a little stiff, eh?”
“Ah! yes,” said Germinie, contracting her lips and winking like a child who is given a glass of liqueur with the dessert at a grand dinner-party.
“It’s good, all the same.” Her spirits rose. “Madame Jupillon, let’s have the bottle—I’ll pay.”
And she tossed money on the table. After the third glass, she cried: “I am tight!” And she roared with laughter.
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had gone out that morning to collect her half-yearly income. When she returned at eleven o’clock, she rang once, twice! no one came. “Ah!” she said to herself, “she must have gone down.” She opened the door with her key, went to her bedroom and looked in: the mattress and bedclothes lay in a heap on two chairs, and Germinie was stretched out across the straw under-mattress, sleeping heavily, like a log, in the utterly relaxed condition following a sudden attack of lethargy.
At the noise made by mademoiselle, Germinie sprang to her feet and passed her hand over her eyes.—“Yes?” she said, as if someone had called her; her eyes were wandering.
“What’s happened?” said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil in alarm; “did you fall? Is anything the matter with you?”
“With me? no,” Germinie replied; “I fell asleep. What time is it? Nothing’s the matter. Ah! what a fool!”
And she began to shake the mattress, turning her back to her mistress to hide the flush of intoxication on her face.
XXVI
One Sunday morning Jupillon was dressing in the room Germinie had furnished for him. His mother was sitting by, gazing at him with the wondering pride expressed in the eyes of mothers among the common people in presence of a son who dresses like a monsieur.
“You’re dressed up like the young man on the first floor!” she said. “I should think it was his coat. I don’t mean to say fine things don’t look well on you, too—”
Jupillon, intent upon tying his cravat, made no reply.
“You’ll play the deuce with the poor girls today!” continued Mère Jupillon, giving to her voice an accent of insinuating sweetness: “Look you, bibi, let me tell you this, you great bad boy: if a young woman goes wrong, so much the worse for her! that’s their lookout. You’re a man, aren’t you? you’ve got the age and the figure and everything. I can’t always keep you in leading-strings. So, I said to myself, as well one as another. That one will do. And I fixed her so that she wouldn’t see anything. Yes, Germinie would do, as you seemed to like her. That prevented you from wasting your money on bad women—and then I didn’t see anything out of the way in the girl till now. But now it won’t do at all. They’re telling stories in the quarter—a heap of horrible things about us. A pack of vipers! We’re above all that, I know. When one has been an honest woman all her life, thank God! But you never know what will happen—mademoiselle would only have to put the end of her nose into her maid’s affairs. Why there’s the law—the bare idea gives me a turn. What do you say to that, bibi, eh?”
“Dame, mamma—whatever you please.”
“Ah! I knew you loved your dear darling mamma!” exclaimed the monstrous creature embracing him. “Well! invite her to dinner tonight. You can get up two bottles of our Lunel—at two francs—the heady kind. And be sure she comes. Make eyes at her, so that she’ll think today’s the great day. Put on your fine gloves: they’ll make you look more dignified.”
Germinie arrived at seven o’clock, happy and bright and hopeful, her head filled with blissful dreams by the mysterious air with which Jupillon delivered his mother’s invitation. They dined and drank and made merry. Mère Jupillon began to cast glances expressive of deep emotion, drowned in tears, upon the couple sitting opposite her. When the coffee was served, she said, as if for the purpose of being left alone with Germinie: “Bibi, you know you have an errand to do this evening.”
Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, as she sipped her coffee, turned to Germinie the face of a mother seeking to learn her daughter’s secret, and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. For a moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other to speak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. Suddenly Germinie rushed from her chair into the stout woman’s arms.
“If you knew, Madame Jupillon!”
She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. “Oh! you won’t be angry with me! Well! yes, I love him—I’ve had a child by him. It’s true, I love him. Three years ago—”
At every word Madame Jupillon’s face became sterner and more icy. She coldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with an accent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a person who is suffocating: “Oh! my God—you!—tell me such things as that!—me!—his mother!—to my face! My God, must it be? My son—a child—an innocent child! You’ve had the face to ruin him for me! And now you tell me that you did it! No, it ain’t possible, my God! And
