“Madame Jupillon! Madame Jupillon!” Germinie murmured in an imploring tone, half dead with shame and grief on the chair on which she had fallen. “I beg you to forgive me. It was stronger than I was. And then I thought—I believed—”
“You believed! Oh! my God; you believed! What did you believe? That you’d be my son’s wife, eh? Ah! Lord God! is it possible, my poor child?”
And adopting a more and more plaintive and lamentable tone as the words she hurled at Germinie cut deeper and deeper, Mère Jupillon continued: “But, my poor girl, you must have a reason, let’s hear it. What did I always tell you? That it would be all right if you’d been born ten years earlier. Let’s see, your date was 1820, you told me, and now it’s ’49. You’re getting on toward thirty, you see, my dear child. I say! it makes me feel bad to say that to you—I’d so much rather not hurt you. But a body only has to look at you, my poor young lady. What can I do? It’s your age—your hair—I can lay my finger in the place where you part it.”
“But,” said Germinie, in whose heart black wrath was beginning to rumble, “what about what your son owes me? My money? The money I took out of the savings bank, the money I borrowed for him, the money I—”
“Money? he owes you money? Oh! yes, what you lent him to begin business with. Well! what about it? Do you think we’re thieves? Does anyone want to cheat you out of your old money, although there wasn’t any paper—I know it because the other day—it just occurs to me—that honest man of a child of mine wanted to write it down for fear he might die. But the next minute we’re pickpockets, as glib as you please! Oh! my God, it’s hardly worth while living in such times as these! Ah! I’m well paid for getting attached to you! But I see through it now. You’re a politician, you are! You wanted to pay yourself with my son, for his whole life! Excuse me! No, thank you! It costs less to give back your money! A café waiter’s leavings! my poor dear boy! God preserve him from it!”
Germinie had snatched her shawl and hat from the hook and was out of doors.
XXVII
Mademoiselle was sitting in her large armchair at the corner of the fireplace, where a few live embers were still sleeping under the ashes. Her black cap was pulled down over her wrinkled forehead almost to her eyes. Her black dress, cut in the shape of a child’s frock, was draped in scanty folds about her scanty body, showing the location of every bone, and fell straight from her knees to the floor. She wore a small black shawl crossed on her breast and tied behind her back, as they are worn by little girls. Her half-open hands were resting on her hips, with the palms turned outward—thin, old woman’s hands, awkward and stiff, and swollen with gout at the knuckles and finger joints. Sitting in the huddled, crouching posture that compels old people to raise their heads to look at you and speak to you, she seemed to be buried in all that mass of black, whence nothing emerged but her face, to which preponderance of bile had imparted the yellow hue of old ivory, and the flashing glance of her brown eyes. One who saw her thus, her bright, sparkling eyes, the meagre body, the garb of poverty and the noble air with which she bore all the burdens of age, might well have fancied that he was looking at a fairy on the stage of the Petits-Ménages.
Germinie was by her side. The old lady began:
“The list is still under the door, eh, Germinie?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“Do you know, my girl,” Mademoiselle de Varandeuil resumed, after a pause, “do you know that when one is born in one of the finest houses on Rue Royale—when one has been in a fair way to own the Grand and Petit-Charolais—when one has almost had the Château of Clichy-la-Garenne for a country house—and when it took two servants to carry the silver platter on which the joint was served at your grandmother’s—do you know that it takes no small amount of philosophy”—and mademoiselle with difficulty raised a hand to her shoulder—“to see yourself end like this, in this devilish nest of rheumatism, where, in spite of all the list in the world, you can’t keep out of draughts.—That’s it, stir up the fire a little.”
She put out her feet toward Germinie, who was kneeling in front of the fireplace, and laughingly placed them under her nose: “Do you know that that takes no small amount of philosophy—to wear stockings out at heel! Simpleton! I’m not scolding you; I know well enough that you can’t do everything. So you might as well have a woman come to do the mending. That’s not very much to do. Why don’t you speak to that little girl that came here last year? She had a face that I remember.”
“Oh! she’s black as a mole, mademoiselle.”
“Bah! I knew it. In the first place you never think well of anybody. That isn’t true, you say? Why, wasn’t she a niece of Mère Jupillon’s? We might take her for one or two days a week.”
“That hussy shall never set foot here.”
“Nonsense, more fables! You’re a most astonishing creature, to adore people and then not want to see them again. What has she done to you?”
“She’s a lost creature, I tell you!”
“Bah! what does my linen care for that?”
“But, mademoiselle.”
“All right!
