"He must have twenty francs," Germinie mechanically repeated the
sentence to herself several times, but her thoughts did not go beyond
the words she uttered. The walk and the climb up five flights of stairs
had made her dizzy. She fell in a sitting posture on the greasy couch in
the kitchen, hung her head, and laid her arms on the table. Her ears
were ringing. Her ideas went and came in a disorderly throng, stifling
one another in her brain, and of them all but one remained, more and
more distinct and persistent: "He must have twenty francs! twenty
francs! twenty francs!" And she looked as if she expected to find them
somewhere there, in the fireplace, in the waste-basket, under the stove.
Then she thought of the people who owed her, of a German maid who had
promised to repay her more than a year before. She rose and tied her
capstrings. She no longer said: "He must have twenty francs;" she said:
"I will get them."
She went down to Adele: "You haven't twenty francs for a note that just
came, have you? Mademoiselle has gone out."
"Nothing here," said Adele; "I gave madame my last twenty francs last
night to get her supper. The jade hasn't come back yet. Will you have
thirty sous?"
She ran to the grocer's. It was Sunday, and three o'clock in the
afternoon: the grocer had closed his shop.
There were a number of people at the fruitwoman's; she asked for four
sous' worth of herbs.
"I haven't any money," said she. She hoped that the woman would say: "Do
you want some?" Instead of that, she said: "What an idea! as if I was
afraid of you!" There were other maids there, so she went out without
saying anything more.
"Is there anything for us?" she said to the concierge. "Ah! by the way,
my Pipelet, you don't happen to have twenty francs about you, do you? it
will save my going way up-stairs again."
"Forty, if you want----"
She breathed freely. The concierge went to a desk at the back of the
lodge. "_Sapristi!_ my wife has taken the key. Why! how pale you are!"
"It isn't anything." And she rushed out into the courtyard toward the
door of the servant's staircase.
This is what she thought as she went up-stairs: "There are people who
find twenty-franc pieces. He needed them to-day, he told me.
Mademoiselle gave me my money not five days ago, and I can't ask her.
After all, what are twenty francs more or less to her? The grocer would
surely have lent them to me. I had another grocer on Rue Taitbout: he
didn't close till evening Sundays."
She was in front of her own door. She leaned over the rail of the other
staircase, looked to see if anyone was coming up, entered her room, went
straight to mademoiselle's bedchamber, opened the window and breathed
long and hard with her elbows on the window-sill. Sparrows hastened to
her from the neighboring chimneys, thinking that she was going to toss
bread to them. She closed the window and glanced at the top of the
commode--first at a vein of marble, then at a little sandal-wood box,
then at the key--a small steel key left in the lock. Suddenly there was
a ringing in her ears; she thought that the bell rang. She ran and
opened the door: there was no one there. She returned with the certainty
that she was alone, went to the kitchen for a cloth and began to rub a
mahogany armchair, turning her back to the commode; but she could still
see the box, she could see it lying open, she could see the coins at the
right where mademoiselle kept her gold, the papers in which she wrapped
it, a hundred francs in each;--her twenty francs were there! She closed
her eyes as if the light dazzled them. She felt a dizziness in her
conscience; but immediately her whole being rose in revolt against her,
and it seemed to her as if her heart in its indignation rose to her
throat. In an instant the honor of her whole life stood erect between
her hand and that key. Her upright, unselfish, devoted past, twenty
years of resistance to the evil counsels and the corruption of that foul
quarter, twenty years of scorn for theft, twenty years in which her
pocket had not held back a sou from her employers, twenty years of
indifference to gain, twenty years in which temptation had never come
near her, her long maintained and natural virtue, mademoiselle's
confidence in her--all these things came to her mind in a single
instant. Her youthful years clung to her and took possession of her.
From her family, from the memory of her parents, from the unsullied
reputation of her wretched name, from the dead from whom she was
descended, there arose a murmur as of guardian angels hovering about
her. For one second she was saved.
And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain.
She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude to
her mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which the
other maids in the house boasted vaingloriously. She concluded that
mademoiselle was very fortunate to have her in her service, and that she
should have increased her wages more since she had been with her.
"And then," she suddenly asked herself, "why does she leave the key in
her box?" And she began to reflect thereupon that the money in the box
was not used for living expenses, but had been laid aside by
mademoiselle to buy a velvet dress for a goddaughter.--"Sleeping
money," she said to herself. She marshaled her reasons with
precipitation, as if to make it impossible to discuss them. "And then,
it's only for once. She would lend them to me if I asked her. And I will
return them."
She put out her hand and turned the key. She stopped; it seemed to her
that the intense silence round about was listening to her and looking at
her. She raised her eyes: the mirror threw back her face at her. Before
that face, her own, she was afraid; she recoiled in terror and shame as
if before the face of her crime: it was a thief's head that she had upon
her shoulders!
She fled into the corridor. Suddenly she turned upon her heel, went
straight to the box, turned the key, put in her hand, fumbled under the
hair trinkets and souvenirs, felt in a roll of five louis and took out
one piece, closed the box and rushed into the kitchen. She had the
little coin in her hand and dared not look at it.