When Madame Josserand, preceded by her young ladies, left the evening
party given by Madame Dambreville, who resided on a fourth floor in the
Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue de l’Oratoire, she roughly
slammed the street door, in the sudden outburst of a passion she had
been keeping under for the past two hours. Berthe, her younger
daughter, had again just gone and missed a husband.
“Well! what are you doing there?” said she angrily to the young girls,
who were standing under the arcade and watching the cabs pass by. “Walk
on! don’t have any idea we are going to ride! To waste another two
francs, eh?”
And as Hortense, the elder, murmured:
“It will be pleasant, with this mud. My shoes will never recover it.”
“Walk on!” resumed the mother, all beside herself. “When you have no
more shoes, you can stop in bed, that’s all. A deal of good it is,
taking you out!”
Berthe and Hortense bowed their heads and turned into the Rue de
l’Oratoire. They held their long skirts up as high as they could over
their crinolines, squeezing their shoulders together and shivering
under their thin opera-cloaks. Madame Josserand followed behind,
wrapped in an old fur cloak made of Calabar skins, looking as shabby as
cats’. All three, without bonnets, had their hair enveloped in lace
wraps, head-dresses which caused the last passers-by to look back,
surprised at seeing them glide along the houses, one by one, with bent
backs, and their eyes fixed on the puddles. And the mother’s
exasperation increased still more at the recollection of many similar
returns home, for three winters past, hampered by their gay dresses,
amidst the black mud of the streets and the jeers of belated
blackguards. No, decidedly, she had had enough of dragging her young
ladies about to the four corners of Paris, without daring to venture on
the luxury of a cab, for fear of having to omit a dish from the
morrow’s dinner!
“And she makes marriages!” said she out loud, returning to Madame
Dambreville, and talking alone to ease herself, without even addressing
her daughters, who had turned down the Rue Saint-Honoré. “They are
pretty, her marriages! A lot of impertinent minxes, who come from no
one knows where! Ah! if one was not obliged! It’s like her last
success, that bride whom she brought out, to show us that it did not
always fail; a fine specimen! a wretched child who had to be sent back
to her convent for six months, after a little mistake, to be
re-whitewashed!”
The young girls were crossing the Place du Palais-Royal, when a shower
came on. It was a regular rout. They stopped, slipping, splashing,
looking again at the vehicles passing empty along.
“Walk on!” cried the mother, pitilessly. “We are too near now; it is
not worth two francs. And your brother Léon, who refused to leave with
us for fear of having to pay for the cab! So much the better for him if
he gets what he wants at that lady’s, but we can say that it is not at
all decent. A woman who is over fifty and who only receives young men!
An old nothing-much whom a high personage married to that fool
Dambreville, appointing him head clerk!”
Hortense and Berthe trotted along in the rain, one before the other,
without seeming to hear. When their mother thus eased herself, letting
everything out, and forgetting the wholesome strictness with which she
kept them, it was agreed that they should be deaf. Berthe, however,
revolted on entering the gloomy and deserted Rue de l’Echelle.
“Oh, dear!” said she, “the heel of my shoe is coming off. I cannot go a
step further!”
Madame Josserand’s wrath became terrible.
“Just walk on! Do I complain? Is it my place to be out in the street at
such a time and in such weather? It would be different if you had a
father like others! But no, the fine gentleman stays at home taking his
ease. It is always my turn to drag you about; he would never accept the
burden. Well! I declare to you that I have had enough of it. Your
father may take you out in future if he likes; may the devil have me if
ever again I accompany you to houses where I am plagued like that! A
man who deceived me as to his capacities, and who has never yet
procured me the least pleasure! Ah! good heavens! there is one I would
not marry now, if it were to come over again!”
The young ladies no longer protested. They were already acquainted with
this inexhaustible chapter of their mother’s blighted hopes. With their
lace wraps drawn over their faces, their shoes sopping wet, they
rapidly followed the Rue Sainte-Anne. But, in the Rue de Choiseul, at
the very door of her house, a last humiliation awaited Madame
Josserand: the Duveyriers’ carriage splashed her as it passed in.
On the stairs, the mother and the young ladies, worn out and enraged,
recovered their gracefulness when they had to pass before Octave. Only,
as soon as ever their door was closed behind them, they rushed through
the dark apartment, knocking up against the furniture, and tumbled into
the dining-room, where Monsieur Josserand was writing by the feeble
light of a little lamp.
“Failed!” cried Madame Josserand, letting herself fall on to a chair.
And, with a rough gesture, she tore the lace wrap from her head, threw
her fur cloak on to the back of her chair, and appeared in a flaring
dress trimmed with black satin and cut very low in the neck, looking
enormous, her shoulders still beautiful, and resembling a mare’s
shining flanks. Her square face, with its drooping cheeks and too big
nose, expressed the tragic fury of a queen restraining herself from
descending to the use of coarse, vulgar expressions.
“Ah!” said Monsieur Josserand simply, bewildered by this violent
entrance.
He kept blinking his eyes and was seized with uneasiness. His wife
positively crushed him when she displayed that giant throat, the full
weight of which he seemed to feel on the nape of his neck. Dressed in
an old thread-bare frock-coat which he was finishing to wear out at
home, his face looking as though tempered and expunged by thirty-five
years spent at an office desk, he watched her for a moment with his big
lifeless blue eyes. Then, after thrusting his grey locks behind his
ears, feeling very embarrassed and unable to find a word to say, he
attempted to resume his work.
“But you do not seem to understand!” resumed Madame Josserand in a
shrill voice. “I tell you that there is another marriage knocked on the
head, and it is the fourth!”
“Yes, yes, I know, the fourth,” murmured he. “It is annoying, very
annoying.”
And, to escape from his wife’s terrifying nudity, he turned towards
his. daughters with a good-natured smile. They also were removing their
lace wraps and their opera-cloaks; the elder one was in blue and the
younger in pink; their dresses, too, free in cut and over-trimmed, were
like a provocation. Hortense, with her sallow complexion, and her face
spoilt by a nose like her mother’s, which gave her an air of disdainful
obstinacy, had just turned twenty-three and looked twenty-eight; whilst
Berthe, two years younger, retained all a child’s gracefulness, having,
however, the same features, but more delicate and dazzlingly white, and
only menaced with the coarse family mask after she entered the fifties.
“It will do no good if you go on looking at us for ever!” cried Madame
Josserand. “And, for God’s sake, put your writing away; it worries my
nerves!”
“But, my dear,” said he peacefully, “I am addressing wrappers.”
“Ah! yes, your wrappers at three francs a thousand! Is it with those
three francs that you hope to marry your daughters?”
Beneath the feeble light of the little lamp, the table was indeed
covered with large sheets of coarse paper, printed wrappers, the blanks
of which Monsieur Josserand filled in for a largo publisher who had
several periodicals. As his salary as cashier did not suffice, he
passed whole nights at this unprofitable labour, working in secret, and
seized with shame at the idea that any one might discover their penury.
“Three francs are three francs,” replied he in his slow, tired voice.
“Those three francs will enable you to add ribbons to your dresses, and
to offer some pastry to your guests on your Tuesdays at home.”
He regretted his words as soon as he had uttered them; for he felt that
they struck Madame Josserand full in the heart, in the most sensitive
part of her wounded pride. A rush of blood purpled her shoulders; she
seemed on the point of breaking out into revengeful utterances; then,
by an effort of dignity, she merely stammered, “Ah! good heavens! ah!
good heavens!”
And she looked at her daughters; she magisterially crushed her husband
beneath a shrug of her terrible shoulders, as much as to say, “Eh! you
hear him? what an idiot!” The daughters nodded their heads. Then,
seeing himself beaten, and laying down his pen with regret, the father
opened the “Temps” newspaper, which he brought home every evening from
his office.
“Is Saturnin asleep?” sharply inquired Madame Josserand, speaking of
her younger son.
“Yes, long ago,” replied he. “I also sent Adèle to bed. And Léon, did
you see him at the Dambrevilles’?”
“Of course! he sleeps there!” she let out in a cry of rancour which she
was unable to restrain.
The father, surprised, naively added,
“Ah! you think so?”
Hortense and Berthe had become deaf again. They faintly smiled,
however, affecting to be busy with their shoes, which were in a pitiful
state. To create a diversion, Madame Josserand tried to pick another
quarrel with Monsieur Josserand; she begged him to take his newspaper
away every morning, not to leave it lying about in the room all day, as
he had done with the previous number, for instance, a number containing
the report of an abominable trial, which his daughters might have read.
She well recognised there his want of morality.
“Well, are we going to bed?” asked Hortense. “I am hungry.”
“Oh! and I too!” said Berthe. “I am famishing.”
“What! you are hungry!” cried Madame Josserand beside herself. “Did you
not eat any cake there, then? What a couple of geese! You should have
eaten some! I did.”
The young ladies resisted. They were hungry, they were feeling quite
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.