One Sunday morning Jupillon was dressing in the room Germinie had
furnished for him. His mother was sitting by, gazing at him with the
wondering pride expressed in the eyes of mothers among the common people
in presence of a son who dresses like a _monsieur_.
"You're dressed up like the young man on the first floor!" she said. "I
should think it was his coat. I don't mean to say fine things don't look
well on you, too----"
Jupillon, intent upon tying his cravat, made no reply.
"You'll play the deuce with the poor girls to-day!" continued Mere
Jupillon, giving to her voice an accent of insinuating sweetness: "Look
you, bibi, let me tell you this, you great bad boy: if a young woman
goes wrong, so much the worse for her! that's their look-out. You're a
man, aren't you? you've got the age and the figure and everything. I
can't always keep you in leading-strings. So, I said to myself, as well
one as another. That one will do. And I fixed her so that she wouldn't
see anything. Yes, Germinie would do, as you seemed to like her. That
prevented you from wasting your money on bad women--and then I didn't
see anything out of the way in the girl till now. But now it won't do at
all. They're telling stories in the quarter--a heap of horrible things
about us. A pack of vipers! We're above all that, I know. When one has
been an honest woman all her life, thank God! But you never know what
will happen--mademoiselle would only have to put the end of her nose
into her maid's affairs. Why there's the law--the bare idea gives me a
turn. What do you say to that, bibi, eh?"
"_Dame_, mamma,--whatever you please."
"Ah! I knew you loved your dear darling mamma!" exclaimed the monstrous
creature embracing him. "Well! invite her to dinner to-night. You can
get up two bottles of our Lunel--at two francs--the heady kind. And be
sure she comes. Make eyes at her, so that she'll think to-day's the
great day. Put on your fine gloves: they'll make you look more
dignified."
Germinie arrived at seven o'clock, happy and bright and hopeful, her
head filled with blissful dreams by the mysterious air with which
Jupillon delivered his mother's invitation. They dined and drank and
made merry. Mere Jupillon began to cast glances expressive of deep
emotion, drowned in tears, upon the couple sitting opposite her. When
the coffee was served, she said, as if for the purpose of being left
alone with Germinie: "Bibi, you know you have an errand to do this
evening."
Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, as she sipped her coffee, turned to
Germinie the face of a mother seeking to learn her daughter's secret,
and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. For
a moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other to
speak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. Suddenly
Germinie rushed from her chair into the stout woman's arms.
"If you knew, Madame Jupillon!"
She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. "Oh! you won't be
angry with me! Well! yes, I love him--I've had a child by him. It's
true, I love him. Three years ago----"
At every word Madame Jupillon's face became sterner and more icy. She
coldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with an
accent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a person
who is suffocating: "Oh! my God--you!--tell me such things as
that!--me!--his mother!--to my face! My God, must it be? My son--a
child--an innocent child! You've had the face to ruin him for me! And
now you tell me that you did it! No, it ain't possible, my God! And I
had such confidence. There's nothing worth living for. There's no
trusting anybody in this world! All the same, mademoiselle, I wouldn't
ever 'a' believed it of you. _Dame!_ such things give me a turn. Ah!
this upsets me completely. I know myself, and I'm quite likely to be
sick after this----"
"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, Mere 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 cafe
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.