For a whole week Germinie did not set foot in the shop again.
The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, one
evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop
without a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where the
mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath her
hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave forth
a ringing sound.
"There it is!" said she.
And, letting go the corners of the cloth, she emptied its contents on
the table: forth came greasy bank-notes, patched on the back, fastened
together with pins, old tarnished louis d'or, black hundred-sou pieces,
forty-sou pieces, ten-sou pieces, the money of the poor, the money of
toil, money from Christmas-boxes, money soiled by dirty hands, worn out
in leather purses, rubbed smooth in the cash drawer filled with
sous--money with a flavor of perspiration.
For a moment she gazed at the display as if to assure her own eyes; then
she said to Madame Jupillon in a sad voice, the voice of her sacrifice:
"There it is--There's the two thousand three hundred francs for him to
buy a substitute."
"Oh! my dear Germinie!" said the stout woman, almost suffocated by
emotion; and she threw herself upon Germinie's neck, who submitted to be
embraced. "Oh! you must take something with us--a cup of coffee--"
"No, thank you," said Germinie; "I am done up. _Dame!_ I've had to fly
around, you know, to get them. I'm going to bed now. Some other time."
And she went away.
She had had to "fly around," as she said, to scrape together such a sum,
to accomplish that impossibility: to raise two thousand three hundred
francs--two thousand three hundred francs, of which she had not the
first five! She had collected them, begged them, extorted them piece by
piece, almost sou by sou. She had picked them up, scraped them together
here and there, from this one and from that one, by loans of two
hundred, one hundred, fifty, twenty francs, or whatever sum anyone would
lend. She had borrowed from her concierge, her grocer, her fruit woman,
her poulterer, her laundress; she had borrowed from all the dealers in
the quarter, and from the dealers in the quarters where she had
previously lived with mademoiselle. She had made up the amount with
money drawn from every source, even from her poor miserable
water-carrier. She had gone a-begging everywhere, importuned humbly,
prayed, implored, invented fables, swallowed the shame of lying and
of seeing that she was not believed. The humiliation of confessing that
she had no money laid by, as was supposed, and as, through pride, she
had encouraged people to suppose, the sympathy of people she despised,
the refusals, the alms, she had undergone everything, endured what she
would not have endured to procure bread for herself, and not once only,
with a single person, but with thirty, forty, all those who had given
her something or from whom she had hoped for something.
[Illustration: Chapter XXXI
_At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open,
entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the little
table where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon
it, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth
that gave forth a ringing sound._
_"There it is!" said she._]
At last she had succeeded in collecting the money; but it was her master
and had possession of her forever. Her life thenceforth belonged to the
obligations she had entered into with all these people, to the service
her dealers had rendered her, knowing very well what they were doing.
She belonged to her debt, to the sum she would have to pay every year.
She knew it; she knew that all her wages would go in that way; that with
the rates of interest, which she had left entirely at the discretion of
her creditors, and the written obligations demanded by them,
mademoiselle's three hundred francs would hardly suffice to pay the
interest on the twenty-three hundred she had borrowed. She knew that she
was in debt, that she should be in debt forever, that she was doomed
forever to privation and embarrassment, to the strictest economy in her
manner of living and her dress. She had hardly any more illusions as to
the Jupillons than as to her own future. She had a presentiment that
her money was lost so far as they were concerned. She had not even based
any hopes on the possibility that this sacrifice would touch the young
man. She had acted on the impulse of the moment. If she had been told to
die to prevent his going, she would have died. The idea of seeing him a
soldier, the idea of the battlefield, the cannon, the wounded, in
presence of which a woman shuts her eyes in terror, had led her to do
something more than die; to sell her life for that man, to consign
herself to everlasting poverty.