One evening in March the Jupillons, mother and son, were talking
together by the stove in their back-shop.
Jupillon had been drafted. The money his mother had put aside to
purchase his release had been used up as a result of six months of poor
business and by credits given to certain _lorettes_ on the street, who
had left the key under their door-mat one fine morning. He had not
prospered, in a business way, himself, and his stock in trade had been
taken on execution. He had been that day to ask a former employer to
advance him the money to purchase a substitute. But the old perfumer had
not forgiven him for leaving him and setting up for himself, and he
refused point-blank.
Mere Jupillon, in despair, was complaining tearfully. She repeated the
number drawn by her son: "Twenty-two! twenty-two!" And she said: "And
yet I sewed a black spider into your _paletot_ with his web; a _velvety_
fellow he was! Oh, dear! I ought to have done as they told me and made
you wear the cap you were baptized in. Ah! the good God ain't fair!
There's the fruit woman's son drew a lucky number! That comes of being
honest! And those two sluts at number eighteen must go and hook it with
my money! I might have known they meant something by the way they shook
hands. They did me out of more than seven hundred francs, did you know
it? And the black creature opposite--and that infernal girl as had the
face to eat pots of strawberries at twenty francs! they might as well
have taken me too, the hussies! But you haven't gone yet all the same.
I'd rather sell the creamery--I'll go out to work again, do cooking or
housekeeping,--anything! Why, I'd draw money from a stone for you!"
Jupillon smoked and let his mother do the talking. When she had
finished, he said: "That'll do for talk, mamma!--all that's nothing but
words. You'll spoil your digestion and it ain't worth while. You needn't
sell anything--you needn't strain yourself at all--I'll buy my
substitute and it sha'n't cost you a sou;--do you want to bet on it?"
"Jesus!" ejaculated Madame Jupillon.
"I have an idea."
After a pause, Jupillon continued: "I didn't want to make trouble with
you on account of Germinie--you know, at the time the stories about us
were going round; you thought it was time for me to break with her--that
she would be in our way--and you kicked her out of the house, stiff.
That wasn't my idea--I didn't think she was so bad as all that for the
family butter. But, however, you thought best to do it. And perhaps,
after all, you did the best thing; instead of cooling her off, you
warmed her up for me--yes, warmed her up--I've met her once or
twice--and she's changed, I tell you. Gad! how she's drying up!"
"But you know very well she hasn't got a sou."
"I don't say she has, of her own. But what's that got to do with it?
She'll find it somewhere. She's good for twenty-three hundred shiners
yet!"
"But suppose you get mixed up in it?"
"Oh! she won't steal 'em----"
"The deuce she won't!"
"Well! if she does, it won't be from anyone but her mistress. Do you
suppose her mademoiselle would have her pinched for that? She'll turn
her off, and that'll be the end of it. We'll advise her to try the air
in another quarter--off she goes!--and we sha'n't see her again. But it
would be too stupid for her to steal. She'll arrange it somehow, she'll
hunt round and turn things over. I don't know how, not I! but that's her
affair, you understand. This is the time for her to show her talents. By
the way, perhaps you don't know, they say her old woman's sick. If the
dear lady should happen to step out and leave her all the stuff, as the
story goes in the quarter--why, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have
played see-saw with her, eh, mamma? We must put on gloves, you see,
mamma, when we're dealing with people who may have four or five thousand
a year come tumbling into their aprons."
"Oh! my God! what are you talking about? But after the way I treated
her--oh! no, she'll never come back here."
"Well! I tell you I'll bring her back--and to-night at the latest," said
Jupillon, rising, and rolling a cigarette between his fingers. "No
excuses, you know," he said to his mother, "they won't do any good--and
be cold to her. Act as if you received her only on my account, because
you are weak. No one knows what may happen, we must always keep an
anchor to windward."