In the course of a few months, Germinie's life, her whole life belonged
to the _cremiere_. Mademoiselle's service was not exacting and took but
little time. A whiting or a cutlet--that was all the cooking there was
to be done. Mademoiselle might have kept her with her in the evening for
company: she preferred, however, to send her away, to drive her out of
doors, to force her to take a little air and diversion. She asked only
that she would return at ten o'clock to help her to bed; and yet when
Germinie was a little late, mademoiselle undressed herself and went to
bed alone very comfortably. Every hour that her mistress left her at
leisure, Germinie passed in the shop. She fell into the habit of going
down to the creamery in the morning, when the shutters were removed, and
generally carried them inside; she would take her _cafe au lait_ there
and remain until nine o'clock, when she would go back and give
mademoiselle her chocolate; and between breakfast and dinner she found
excuses for returning two or three times, delaying and chattering in the
back-shop on the slightest pretext. "What a magpie you are getting to
be!" mademoiselle would say, in a scolding voice, but with a smiling
face.
At half past five, when her mistress's little dinner was cleared away,
she would run down the stairs four at a time, install herself at Mere
Jupillon's, wait until ten o'clock, clamber up the five flights, and in
five minutes undress her mistress, who submitted unresistingly, albeit
she was somewhat astonished that Germinie should be in such haste to go
to bed; she remembered the time when she had a mania for moving her
sleepy body from one easy-chair to another, and was never willing to go
up to her room. While the candle was still smoking on mademoiselle's
night table, Germinie would be back at the creamery, this time to remain
until midnight, until one o'clock; often she did not go until a
policeman, noticing the light, tapped on the shutters and made them
close up.
In order to be always there and to have the right to be always there, to
make herself a part of the shop, to keep her eyes constantly upon the
man she loved, to hover about him, to keep him, to be always brushing
against him, she had become the servant of the establishment. She swept
the shop, she prepared the old woman's meals and the food for the dogs.
She waited upon the son; she made his bed, she brushed his clothes, she
waxed his boots, happy and proud to touch what he touched, thrilling
with pleasure when she placed her hand where he placed his body, and
ready to kiss the mud upon the leather of his boots, because it was
his!
She did the menial work, she kept the shop, she served the customers.
Madame Jupillon rested everything upon her shoulders; and while the
good-natured girl was working and perspiring, the bulky matron, assuming
the majestic, leisurely air of an annuitant, anchored upon a chair in
the middle of the sidewalk and inhaling the fresh air of the street,
fingered and rattled the precious coin in the capacious pocket beneath
her apron--the coin that rings so sweetly in the ears of the petty
tradesmen of Paris, that the retired shopkeeper is melancholy beyond
words at first, because he no longer has the chinking and the tinkling
under his hand.