I arose at this word, delighted at having surprised their two beautiful souls in all their nakedness, and at the thought of the humiliation that they would feel in my presence afterward. They seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Desiring to see how the scene would end, I kept perfectly still, and made myself as small as possible.
Monsieur, who had been holding in for a long time, now got angry in his turn. He made the fashion journal into a big ball, and flung it with all his might against the dressing-table; and he cried:
"Zut!
Flute!
This is really getting too tiresome!
It is always the same thing. One cannot say anything or do anything without being received like a dog. And always brutalities and coarse language. I have enough of this life; I have had enough of these fishwife's manners. And shall I tell you the truth?
Your corset,—well, your corset is vile. It is a prostitute's corset."
"Wretch!"
With bloodshot eye, foaming mouth, and clenched and threatening fist, she advanced toward Monsieur. And such was her rage that the words came from her mouth in a sort of hoarse belching.
"Wretch!" she roared again.
"And it is you who dare to speak to me in this way,—you?
Oh! but it is unheard of.
When I picked him up in the mud, this poverty-stricken fine gentleman, covered with dirty debts, posted at his club,—when I saved him from the mire, he was not so proud! Your name, I suppose?
Your title?
Oh! clean they were, indeed, this name and title, on which the usurers were unwilling to advance you another hundred sous. You can take them back, and welcome.
And he talks of his nobility, of his ancestors, this Monsieur whom I have bought and whom I support! Well, the nobility will have nothing more from me,—not that!
And, as for your ancestors, you scoundrel, you can try to hang them up. You will see whether you can borrow even ten sous on their ugly mugs,—mugs of veterans and valets.
Nothing more, do you hear?
Never, never!
Back to your gaming-tables, trickster! Back to your prostitutes, pimp!"
She was frightful.
Monsieur, timid, trembling, with cowardly back and humiliated eye, retired before this flood of filth.
He reached the door, noticed me, and fled, and Madame again cried after him, in the passage-way, in a voice which had become more hoarse and horrible:
"Pimp! Dirty pimp!"
And she sank upon her long chair, overcome by a terrible nervous attack, which I finally quieted by making her inhale an entire flask of ether.
Then Madame began again the reading of her love stories and the rearrangement of her drawers.
Monsieur was more absorbed than ever in the complexities of solitaire and in the revision of his collection of pipes. And the correspondence began again. Timid and widely-spaced at first, it was soon going on fast and furiously.
I became utterly tired out with running from the room of one to the room of the other, bearing heart-shaped or hen-shaped threats.
But oh! what fun I had!
Three days after this scene, while reading a missive from Monsieur, on pink paper and bearing his coat of arms, Madame turned pale, and suddenly asked me, in a gasping voice:
"Celestine, do you really think that Monsieur wants to kill himself?
Have you seen him with weapons in his hands?
My God! If he were to kill himself?"
I burst out laughing in Madame's face. And this laugh, which had escaped me in spite of myself, increased, let itself loose, poured itself out. I thought I should die, choked by this laugh, strangled by this cursed laugh that rose, like a tempest, in my breast, and filled my throat with irrepressible hiccups.
For a moment Madame sat aghast.
"What is it?
What is the matter with you?
Why do you laugh like that?
Be still, then. Will you be still, nasty creature?"
But the laugh held me fast; it would not let go. At last, between two gasps, I cried:
"Oh! no, your goings on are too funny, too stupid!
Oh! la la! Oh! la la!
How stupid it is!"
Of course I quit the house that night, and found myself once more on the street pavement.
What a dog of a trade!
What a dog of a life! _____
The blow was a hard one, and I said to myself, but too late, that never should I find another place like that. There I had everything,—good wages, profits of all sorts, easy work, liberty, pleasures.
I had only to let myself live.
Another, less crazy than I, would have been able to put much money aside, and gradually accumulate a complete and beautiful wardrobe. Five or six years only, and who knows?
One could marry, buy a little business, have a home of one's own, secure against want and ill-luck,—almost a lady. But now the series of miseries must begin over again, and I submit anew to the offences of chance. I was much put out by this accident, and furious; furious against myself, against William, against Eugenie, against Madame, against everybody.