ill. So the mother accompanied them to the kitchen, to see if they

could discover anything. The father at once returned stealthily to his wrappers. He well knew that, without them, every little luxury in the home would have disappeared; and that was why, in spite of the scorn and unjust quarrels, he obstinately remained till daybreak engaged in this secret work, happy like the worthy man he was whenever he fancied that an extra piece of lace would hook a rich husband. As they were already stinting the food, without managing to save sufficient for the dresses and the Tuesday receptions, he resigned himself to his martyr-like labour, dressed in rags, whilst the mother and daughters wandered from drawing-room to drawing-room with flowers in their hair.

“What a stench there is here!” cried Madame Josserand on entering the kitchen. “To think that I can never get that slut Adèle to leave the window slightly open! She pretends that the room is so very cold in the morning.”

She went and opened the window, and from the narrow courtyard separating the kitchens there rose an icy dampness, the unsavoury odour of a musty cellar. The candle which Berthe had lighted caused colossal shadows of naked shoulders to dance upon the wall.

“And what a state the place is in!” continued Madame Josserand, sniffing about, and poking her nose into all the dirty corners. “She has not scrubbed her table for a fortnight. Here are plates which have been waiting to be washed since the day before yesterday. On my word, it is disgusting! And her sink, just look! smell it now, smell her sink!”

Her rage was lashing itself. She tumbled the crockery about with her arms white with rice powder and bedecked with gold bangles; she trailed her flaring dress amidst the grease stains, catching it in cooking utensils thrown under the tables, risking her hardly earned luxury amongst the vegetable parings. At last, the discovery of a notched knife made her anger break all bounds.

“I will turn her into the street to-morrow morning!”

“You will be no better off,” quietly remarked Hortense. “We are never able to keep anyone. This is the first who has stayed three months. The moment they begin to get a little decent and know how to make melted butter, off they go.”

Madame Josserand bit her lips. As a matter of fact, Adèle alone, stupid and lousy, and only lately arrived from her native Brittany, could put up with the ridiculously vain penury of these middle-class people, who took advantage of her ignorance and her slovenliness to half starve her. Twenty times already, on account of a comb found on the bread or of some abominable stew which gave them all the colic, they had talked of sending her about her business; then, they had resigned themselves to putting up with her, in the presence of the difficulty of replacing her, for the pilferers themselves declined to be engaged, to enter that hole, where even the lumps of sugar were counted.

“I can’t discover anything!” murmured Berthe, who was rummaging a cupboard.

The shelves had the melancholy emptiness and the false luxury of families where inferior meat is purchased, so as to be able to put flowers on the table. All that was lying about were some white and gold porcelain plates, perfectly empty, a crumb-brush, the silver-plated handle of which was all tarnished, and some cruets without a drain of oil or vinegar in them; there was not a forgotten crust, not a morsel of dessert, not a fruit, nor a sweet, nor a remnant of cheese. One could feel that Adèle’s hunger never satisfied, lapped up the rare dribblets of sauce which her betters left at the bottoms of the dishes, to the extent of rubbing the gilt off.

“But she has gone and eaten all the rabbit!” cried Madame Josserand.

“True,” said Hortense, “there was the tail piece. Ah! no, here it is. It would have surprised me if she had dared. I shall stick to it, you know. It is cold, but it is better than nothing!”

Berthe, on her side, was rummaging about, but without result. At length her hand encountered a bottle, in which her mother had diluted the contents of an old pot of jam, so as to manufacture some red currant syrup for her evening parties. She poured herself out half a glass, saying:

“Ah! an idea! I will soak some bread in this, as it is all there is!”

But Madame Josserand, all anxiety, looked at her sternly.

“Pray, don’t restrain yourself, fill your glass whilst you are about it. It will be quite sufficient if I offer water to the ladies and gentlemen to-morrow, will it not?”

Fortunately, the discovery of another of Adèle’s evil doings interrupted her reprimand. She was still turning about, searching for crimes, when she caught sight of a volume on the table; and then occurred a supreme explosion.

“Oh! the beast! she has again brought my Lamartine into the kitchen!”

It was a copy of “Jocelyn.” She took it up and rubbed it hard, as though dusting it; and she kept repeating that she had twenty times forbidden her to leave it lying about in that way, to write her accounts upon. Berthe and Hortense, meanwhile, had shared the little piece of bread which remained; then carrying their suppers away with them, they said that they would undress first. The mother gave the icy cold stove a last glance, and returned to the dining-room, tightly holding her Lamartine beneath the massive flesh of her arm.

Monsieur Josserand continued writing. He trusted that his wife would be satisfied with crushing him with a glance of contempt as she crossed the room to go to bed. But she again dropped on to a chair, facing him, and looked at him fixedly without speaking. He felt this look, and was seized with such uneasiness, that his pen kept sputtering on the flimsy wrapper paper.

“So it was you who prevented Adèle making a cream for tomorrow evening?” said she at length.

He raised his head in amazement.

“I, my dear!”

“Oh! you will again deny it, as you always do. Then, why has she not made the cream I ordered? You know very well that before our party to-morrow Uncle Bachelard is coming to dinner, it is his saint’s-day, which is very awkward, happening as it does on my reception day. If there is no cream, we must have an ice, and that will be another five francs squandered!”

He did not attempt to exculpate himself. Not daring to resume his work, he began to play with his penholder. There was a brief pause.

“To-morrow morning,” resumed Madame Josserand, “you will oblige me by calling on the Campardons and reminding them very politely, if you can, that we are expecting to see them in the evening. Their young man arrived this afternoon. Ask them to bring him with them. Do you understand? I wish him to come.”

“What young man?”

“A young man; it would take too long to explain everything to you. I have obtained all necessary information about him. I am obliged to try everything, as you leave your daughters entirely to me, like a bundle of rubbish, without occupying yourself about marrying them any more than about marrying the Grand Turk.”

The thought revived her anger.

“You see, I contain myself, but it is more, oh! it is more than I can stand! Say nothing, sir, say nothing, or really my anger will get the better of me.”

He said nothing, but she vented her wrath upon him all the same.

“It has become unbearable! I warn you, that one of these mornings I shall go off, and leave you here with your two idiotic daughters. Was I born to live such a skinflint life as this? Always cutting farthings into four, never even having a decent pair of boots, and not being able to receive my friends decently! And all that through your fault! Ah! do not shake your head, do not exasperate me more than I am already! Yes, your fault! You deceived me, sir, basely deceived me. One should not marry a woman, when one is decided to let her want for everything. You played the boaster, you pretended you had a fine future before you, you were the friend of your employer’s sons, of those brothers Bemheim, who, since, have merely made a fool of you. What! You dare to pretend that they have not made a fool of you! But you ought to be their partner by now? It is you who made their business what it is, one of the first glass-houses in Paris, and you have remained their cashier, a subordinate, a hireling. Really! you have no spirit; hold your tongue.”

“I get eight thousand francs a year,” murmured the cashier. “It is a very good berth.”

“A good berth, after more than thirty years’ labour?” resumed Madame Josserand. “They grind you down, and you are delighted. Do you know what I would have done, had I been in your place? well! I would have put the business into my pocket twenty times over. It was so easy. I saw it when I married you, and since then I have never ceased advising you to do so. But it required some initiative and intelligence; it was a question of not going to sleep on your leather-covered stool, like a blockhead.”

“Come,” interrupted Monsieur Josserand, “are you going to reproach me now with being honest?”

She jumped up, and advanced towards him, flourishing her Lamartine.

“Honest! in what way do you mean? Begin by being honest towards me. Others do not count till afterwards, I hope! And I repeat, sir, it is not honest to take a young girl in, pretending to be ambitious to become rich some day, and then to end by losing what little wits you had in looking after somebody else’s cashbox. On my word, I was nicely swindled! Ah! if it were to happen over again, and if I had only known your family!”

She was walking violently about. He could not restrain a slight sign of impatience, in spite of his great desire for peace.

“You would do better to go to bed, Eléonore,” said he. “It is past one o’clock, and I assure you this work is pressing. My family has done you no harm, so do not speak of it.”

“Ah! and why, pray? Your family is no more sacred than another, I suppose. Every one at Clermont knows that your father, after selling his business of solicitor, let himself be ruined by a servant. You might have seen your daughters married long ago, had he not taken up with a strumpet when over seventy. There is another who has swindled me!”

Monsieur Josserand turned pale. He replied in a trembling voice, which rose higher as he went on:

“Listen, do not let us throw our relations at each other’s heads. Your father never paid me your dowry, the thirty thousand francs he promised.”

“Eh? what? thirty thousand francs!”

“Exactly; don’t pretend to be surprised. And if my father met with misfortunes, yours behaved in a most disgraceful way towards us. I was never able to find out clearly what he left. There were all sorts of underhand dealings, so that the school in the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor should remain with your sister’s husband, that shabby usher who no longer recognises us now. We were robbed as though in a wood.”

Madame Josserand, now ghastly white, was choking with rage before her husband’s inconceivable revolt.

“Do not say a word against papa! For forty years he was a credit to instruction. Go and talk of the Bachelard Academy in the neighbourhood of the Panthéon! And as for my sister and my brother-in-law, they are what they are. They have robbed me, I know; but it is not for you to say so. I will not permit it, understand that! Do I speak to you of your sister, who eloped with an officer? Oh! you have indeed some nice relations!”

“An officer who married her, madame. There is uncle Bachelard, too, your brother, a man totally destitute of all morality—”

“But you are becoming cracked, sir! He is rich, he earns what he pleases as a commission merchant, and he has promised to provide Berthe’s dowry. Do you then respect nothing?”

“Ah! yes, provide Berthe’s dowry! Will you bet that he will give a sou, and that we shall not have had to put up with his nasty habits for nothing? He makes me feel ashamed of him every time he comes here. A liar, a rake, a person who takes advantage of the situation, who for fifteen years past, seeing us all on our knees before his fortune, has been taking me every Saturday to spend two hours in his office, to go over his books! It saves him five francs. We have never yet been favoured with a single present from him.”

Madame Josserand, catching her breath, was wrapped for a moment in thought. Then she uttered this last cry:

“And you have a nephew in the police, sir!”

A fresh pause ensued. The light from the little lamp was becoming dimmer, wrappers were flying about beneath Monsieur Josserand’s feverish gestures; and he looked his wife full in the face—his wife in her low neck dress—determined to say everything, and quivering with courage.

“With eight thousand francs a year one can do many things,” resumed he. “You are always complaining. But you should not have arranged your housekeeping on a footing superior to our means. It is your mania for receiving and for paying visits, of having your at homes, of giving tea and pastry—“?

She did not let him finish.

“Now we have come to it! Shut me up in a box at once. Reproach me for not walking out as naked as my hand. And your daughters, sir, who will marry them if we never see any one? We don’t see many people as it is. It does well to sacrifice oneself, to be judged afterwards with such meanness of heart!”

“We have all of us, madame, sacrificed ourselves. Léon had to make way for his sisters; and he left the house to earn his own living without any assistance from us. As for Saturnin, poor child, he does not even know how to read. And I deny myself everything; I pass my nights—”

“Why did you have daughters then, sir? You are surely not going to reproach them with their education, I hope? Any other man in your place would be proud of Hortense’s diploma and of Berthe’s talents. The dear child again delighted every one this evening with her waltz, the ‘Banks of the Oise,’ and her last painting will certainly enchant our guests to-morrow. But you, sir, you are not even a father; you would have sent your children to take cows to grass, instead of sending them to school.”

“Well! I took out an assurance for Berthe’s benefit Was it not you, madame, who, when the fourth payment became due, made use of the money to cover the drawing-room furniture? And, since then, you have even negotiated the premiums that had been paid.”

“Of course! as you leave us to die of hunger. Ah! you may indeed bite your fingers, if your daughters become old maids.”

“Bite my fingers! But, Jove’s thunder! it is you who frighten the likely men away, with your dresses and your ridiculous parties!”

Never before had Monsieur Josserand gone so far. Madame Josserand, suffocating, stammered forth the words: “I—I ridiculous!” when the door opened. Hortense and Berthe were returning, in their petticoats and little calico jackets, their hair let down, and their feet in old slippers.

“Ah, well! it is too cold in our room!” said Berthe shivering. “The food freezes in your mouth. Here, at least, there has been a fire this evening.”

And both dragging their chairs along the floor, seated themselves close to the stove, which still retained a little warmth. Hortense held her rabbit bone in the tips of her fingers, and was skilfully picking it. Berthe dipped pieces of bread in her glass of syrup. The parents, however, were so excited that they did not even appear to notice their arrival. They continued:

“Ridiculous—ridiculous, sir! I shall not be ridiculous again! Let my head be cut off if I wear out another pair of gloves in trying to get them husbands. It is your turn now! And try not to be more ridiculous than I have been!”

“I daresay, madame, now that you have exhibited them and compromised them everywhere! Whether you marry them or whether you don’t, I don’t care a button!”

“And I care less, Monsieur Josserand! I care so little that I will bundle them out into the street if you aggravate me much more. And if you have a mind to, you can follow them, the door is open. Ah, heavens! what a good riddance!”

The young ladies quietly listened, used to these lively recriminations. They were still eating, their little jackets dropping from their shoulders, and their bare skin gently rubbing against the lukewarm earthenware of the stove; and they looked charming in this undress, with their youth and their hearty appetites and their eyes heavy with sleep.

“You are very foolish to quarrel,” at length observed Hortense, with her mouth full. “Mamma only spoils her temper, and papa will be ill again to-morrow at his office. It seems to me that we are old enough to be able to find husbands for ourselves.”

This created a diversion. The father, thoroughly exhausted, made a feint of returning to his wrappers; and he sat with his nose over the paper, unable to write, his hands trembling violently. The mother, who had been moving about the room like an escaped lioness, went and planted herself in front of Hortense.

“If you are speaking for yourself,” cried she, “you are a great ninny! Your Verdier will never marry you.”

“That is my business,” boldly replied the young girl.

After having contemptuously refused five or six suitors, a little clerk, the son of a tailor, and other young fellows whose prospects she did not consider good enough, she had ended by setting her cap at a barrister, whom she had met at the Dambrevilles’, and who was already turned forty. She considered him very clever, and destined to make a name in the world. But the misfortune was that for fifteen years past Verdier had been living with a mistress, who in the neighbourhood even passed for his wife. She knew of this, though, and by no means let it trouble her.

“My child,” said the father, raising his head once more, “I begged you not to think of this marriage. You know the situation.”

She stopped sucking her bone, and said with an air of impatience:

“What of it? Verdier has promised me he will leave her. She is a fool.”

“You are wrong, Hortense, to speak in that way. And if he should also leave you one day to return to her whom you would have caused him to abandon?”

“That is my business,” sharply retorted the young woman.

Berthe listened, fully acquainted with this matter, the contingencies of which she discussed daily with her sister. She was, besides, like her father, all in favour of the poor woman, whom it was proposed to turn out into the street, after having performed a wife’s duties for fifteen years. But Madame Josserand intervened.

“Leave off, do! those wretched women always end by returning to the gutter. Only, it is Verdier who will never bring himself to leave her. He is fooling you, my dear. In your place, I would not wait a second for him; I would try and find some one else.”

Hortense’s voice became sourer still, whilst two livid spots appeared on her cheeks.

“Mamma, you know how I am. I want him, and I will have him. I will never marry any one else, even though he kept me waiting a hundred years.”

The mother shrugged her shoulders.

“And you call others fools!”

But the young girl rose up, quivering with rage.

“Here! don’t go pitching into me!” cried she. “I have finished my rabbit. I prefer to go to bed. As you are unable to find us husbands, you must let us find them in our own way.”

And she withdrew, violently slamming the door behind her.

Madame Josserand turned majestically towards her husband, and uttered this profound remark:

“That, sir, is the result of your bringing up!”

Monsieur Josserand did not protest; he was occupied in dotting his thumb nail with ink, whilst waiting till they allowed him to resume his writing. Berthe, who had eaten her bread, dipped a finger in the glass to finish up her syrup. She felt comfortable, with her back nice and warm, and did not hurry herself, being undesirous of encountering her sister’s quarrelsome temper in their bedroom.

“Ah! and that is the reward!” continued Madame Josserand, resuming her walk to and fro across the dining-room. “For twenty years one wears oneself out for these young ladies, one goes in want of everything in order to make them accomplished women, and they will not even let one have the satisfaction of seeing them married according to one’s own fancy. It would be different, if they had ever been refused a single thing! But I have never kept a sou for myself, and have even gone without clothes to dress them as though we had an income of fifty thousand francs. No, really, it is too absurd! When those hussies have had a careful education, have got just as much religion as is necessary, and the airs of rich girls, they leave you in the lurch, they talk of marrying barristers, adventurers, who lead lives of debauchery!”

She stopped before Berthe, and, menacing her with her finger, said:

“As for you, if you follow your sister’s example, you will have me to deal with.”

Then she recommenced stamping round the room, speaking to herself, jumping from one idea to another, contradicting herself with the brazenness of a woman who will always be in the right.

“I did what I ought to do, and were it to be done over again I should do the same. In life, it is only the most shamefaced who lose. Money is money; when one has none, one may as well retire. Whenever I had twenty sous, I always said I had forty; for that is real wisdom, it is better to be envied than pitied. It is no use having a good education if one has not good clothes to wear, for then people despise you. It is not just, but it is so. I would sooner wear dirty petticoats than a cotton dress. Feed on potatoes, but have a chicken when you have any one to dinner. And only fools would say the contrary!”

She looked fixedly at her husband, to whom these last reflections were addressed. The latter, worn out, and declining another battle, had the cowardice to declare:

“It is true; money is everything in our days.”

“You hear,” resumed Madame Josserand, returning towards her daughter. “Go straight ahead and try to give us satisfaction. How is it you let this marriage fall through?”

Berthe understood that her turn had come.

“I don’t know, mamma,” murmured she “A second head-clerk in a government office,” continued the mother; “not yet thirty, with a splendid future before him. Every month he would be bringing you his money; it is something substantial that, there is nothing like it. You have been up to some tomfoolery again, just the same as with the others.”

“I have not, mamma, I assure you. He must have obtained some information—have heard that I had no money.”

But Madame Josserand cried out at this.

“And the dowry that your uncle is going to give you! Every one knows about that dowry. No, there is something else; he withdrew too abruptly. When dancing you passed into the parlour.”

Berthe became confused.

“Yes, mamma. And, as we were alone, he even tried to do some naughty things; he kissed me, seizing hold of me like that. Then I was frightened; I pushed him up against the furniture—”

Her mother, again overcome with rage, interrupted her.

“Pushed him up against the furniture, ah! the wretched girl pushed him up against the furniture!”

“But, mamma, he held me—”

“What of it? He held you, that was nothing! A fat lot of good it is sending such fools to school! Whatever did they teach you, eh?”

A rush of colour rose to the young girl’s cheeks and shoulders. Tears filled her eyes, whilst she looked as confused as a violated virgin.

“It was not my fault; he looked so wicked. I did not know what to do.”

“Did not know what to do! she did not know what to do! Have I not told you a hundred times that your fears are ridiculous? It is your lot to live in society. When a man is rough, it is because he loves you, and there is always a way of keeping him in his place in a nice manner. For a kiss behind a door! in truth now, ought you to mention such a thing to us, your parents? And you push people against the furniture, and you drive away your suitors!”

She assumed a doctoral air as she continued:

“It is ended; I despair of doing anything with you, you are too stupid, my girl. One would have to coach you in everything, and that would be awkward. As you have no fortune, understand at least that you must hook the men by some other means. One should be amiable, have loving eyes, abandon one’s hand occasionally, allow a little playfulness, without seeming to do so; in short, one should angle for a husband. You make a great mistake, if you think it improves your eyes to cry like a fool!”

Berthe was sobbing.

“You aggravate me—leave off crying. Monsienr Josserand, just tell your daughter not to spoil her face by crying in that way. It will be too much if she becomes ugly!”

“My child,” said the father, “be reasonable; listen to your mother’s good advice. You must not spoil your good looks, my darling.”

“And what irritates me is that she is not so bad when she likes,” resumed Madame Josserand. “Come, wipe your eyes, look at me as if I was a gentleman courting you. You smile, you drop your fan, so that the gentleman, in picking it up, slightly touches your fingers. That is not the way. You are holding you head up too stiffly, you look like a sick hen. Lean back more, show your neck; it is too young to be hidden.”

“Then, like this, mamma?”

“Yes, that is better. And never be stiff, be supple. Men do not care for planks. And, above all, if they go too far do not play the simpleton. A man who goes too far is done for, my dear.”

The drawing-room clock struck two; and, in the excitement of that prolonged vigil, in her desire now become furious for an immediate marriage, the mother forgot herself in thinking out loud, making her daughter turn about like a papier-mache doll. The latter, without spirit or will, abandoned herself; but she felt very heavy at heart, fear and shame brought a lump to her throat. Suddenly, in the midst of a silvery laugh which her mother was forcing her to attempt, she burst into sobs, her face all upset:

“No! no! it pains me!” stammered she,

For a second, Madame Josserand remained incensed and amazed. Ever since she left the Dambrevilles’, her hand had been itching, there were slaps in the air. Then, she landed Berthe a clout with all her might.

“Take that! you are too aggravating! What a fool! On my word, the men are right!”

In the shock, her Lamartine, which she had kept under her arm, fell to the floor. She picked it up, wiped it, and without adding another word, she retired into the bedroom, royally drawing her ball-dress around her.

“It was bound to end thus,” murmured Monsieur Josserand, not daring to detain his daughter, who went off also, holding her cheek and crying louder than ever.

But, as Berthe felt her way across the ante-room, she found her brother Saturnin up, barefooted and listening. Saturnin was a big, ill-formed fellow of twenty-five, with wild-looking eyes, and who had remained childish after an attack of brain-fever. Without being mad, he terrified the household by attacks of blind violence, whenever he was thwarted. Berthe, alone, was able to subdue him with a look. He had nursed her when she was still quite a child, through a long illness, obedient as a dog to her little invalid girl’s caprices; and, ever since he had saved her, he was seized with an adoration for her, into which entered every kind of love.

“Has she been beating you again?” asked he in a low and ardent voice.

Berthe, uneasy at finding him there, tried to send him away.

“Go to bed, it is nothing to do with you.”

“Yes, it is. I will not have her beat you! She woke me up, she was shouting so. She had better not try it on again, or I will strike her!”

Then, she seized him by the wrists, and spoke to him as to a disobedient animal. He submitted at once, and stuttered, crying like a little boy:

“It hurts you very much, does it not? Where is the sore place, that I may kiss it?”

And, having found her cheek in the dark, he kissed it, wetting it with his tears, as he repeated:

“It is well, now, it is well, now.”

Meanwhile, Monsieur Josserand, left alone, had laid down his pen, his heart was so full of grief. At the end of a few minutes, he got up gently to go and listen at the doors. Madame Josserand was snoring. No sounds of crying issued from his daughters’ room. All was dark and peaceful. Then he returned, feeling slightly relieved. He saw to the lamp which was smoking, and mechanically resumed his writing. Two big tears, unfelt by him, dropped on to the wrappers, in the solemn silence of the slumbering house.