“Well! have you reflected?” said Jupillon. “This little Avenue Trudaine isn’t a very cheerful place, do you know?”
“Come on,” Germinie replied.
And, without another word, she set out again at the same fierce, jerky gait, agitated by all the tumult raging in her heart. Her thoughts were expressed in her gestures. Her feet went astray, madness attacked her hands. At times her shadow, seen from behind, reminded one of a woman from La Salpêtrière. Two or three passersby stopped for a moment and looked after her; then, remembering that they were in Paris, passed on.
Suddenly she stopped, and with the gesture of one who has made a desperate resolution, she said: “Ah! my God! another pin in the cushion!—Let us go!”
And she took Jupillon’s arm.
“Oh! I know very well,” said Jupillon, when they were near the creamery, “my mother wasn’t fair to you. You see, the woman has been too virtuous all her life. She don’t know, she don’t understand. And then, d’ye see, I’ll tell you the whole secret: she loves me so much she’s jealous of any woman who loves me. So go in, do!”
And he pushed her into the arms of Madame Jupillon, who kissed her, mumbled a few words of regret, and made haste to weep in order to relieve her own embarrassment and make the scene more affecting.
Throughout the evening Germinie sat with her eyes fixed on Jupillon, almost terrifying him with her expression.
“Come, come,” he said, as he walked home with her, “don’t be so down in the mouth as all this. We must have a little philosophy in this world. Well! here I am a soldier—that’s all! To be sure they don’t all come back. But then—look here! I propose that we enjoy ourselves for the fortnight that’s left, because it will be so much gained—and if I don’t come back—Well, at all events, I shall leave you a pleasant memory of me.”
Germinie made no reply.
XXXI
For a whole week Germinie did not set foot in the shop again.
The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave forth a ringing sound.
“There it is!” said she.
And, letting go the corners of the cloth, she emptied its contents on the table: forth came greasy banknotes, patched on the back, fastened together with pins, old tarnished louis d’or, black hundred-sou pieces, forty-sou pieces, ten-sou pieces, the money of the poor, the money of toil, money from Christmas-boxes, money soiled by dirty hands, worn out in leather purses, rubbed smooth in the cash drawer filled with sous—money with a flavor of perspiration.
For a moment she gazed at the display as if to assure her own eyes; then she said to Madame Jupillon in a sad voice, the voice of her sacrifice:
“There it is—There’s the two thousand three hundred francs for him to buy a substitute.”
“Oh! my dear Germinie!” said the stout woman, almost suffocated by emotion; and she threw herself upon Germinie’s neck, who submitted to be embraced. “Oh! you must take something with us—a cup of coffee—”
“No, thank you,” said Germinie; “I am done up. Dame! I’ve had to fly around, you know, to get them. I’m going to bed now. Some other time.”
And she went away.
She had had to “fly around,” as she said, to scrape together such a sum, to accomplish that impossibility: to raise two thousand three hundred francs—two thousand three hundred francs, of which she had not the first five! She had collected them, begged them, extorted them piece by piece, almost sou by sou. She had picked them up, scraped them together here and there, from this one and from that one, by loans of two hundred, one hundred, fifty, twenty francs, or whatever sum anyone would lend. She had borrowed from her concierge, her grocer, her fruit woman, her poulterer, her laundress; she had borrowed from all the dealers in the quarter, and from the dealers in the quarters where she had previously lived with mademoiselle. She had made up the amount with money drawn from every source, even from her poor miserable water-carrier. She had gone a-begging everywhere, importuned humbly, prayed, implored, invented fables, swallowed the shame of lying and of seeing that she was not believed. The humiliation of confessing that she had no money laid by, as was supposed, and as, through pride, she had encouraged people to suppose, the sympathy of people she despised, the refusals, the alms, she had undergone everything, endured what she would not have endured to procure bread for herself, and not once only, with a single person, but with thirty, forty, all those who had given her something or from whom she had hoped for something.
At last she had succeeded in collecting the money; but it was her master and had possession of her forever. Her life thenceforth belonged to the obligations she had entered into with all these people, to the service her dealers had rendered her, knowing very well what they were doing. She belonged to
