“Oh, the beggarly wretch, he’s off again to his Straw-Lair!”
But as she came in at the door her father ran up to her and headed the explosion off.
“Now don’t squeal, somebody’s come to visit you; a gentleman from the Munistry!”
The gentleman was waiting in the drawing-room; for, as it always happens in these buildings, cheaply built and made by machinery, with every room on each floor exactly the same, one above the other, they too had a drawing-room hung with a cheap paper, creamy and waffled into patterns till it looked like a dish of beaten eggs, a drawing-room which made the peasant girl a very proud woman. Méjean was passing in review most compassionately the Provençal furniture scattered about this dentist’s waiting-room, full of the crude light from two windows guiltless of curtains—the coco and the moco (tumbler-holder and lamp-holder), the kneading-trough, the bread-basket much banged about by house-movings and by travel—these showed their rural rustiness alongside of the cheap gilding and wall paintings. The haughty profile of Audiberte, very pure in its lines, surmounted by her Sunday head-dress, which seemed just as out-of-place in the fifth story of a Parisian apartment house, completed the feeling of pity which he had concerning these victims of Roumestan; and so he introduced very gently the cause of his visit.
The Minister, wishing to spare the Valmajours new misfortunes, for which up to a certain point he felt himself responsible, sent them five thousand francs to pay for their losses in having changed their home and to carry them back again to their own place. He took the bills from his purse and laid them on the old dark kneading-trough of nutwood.
“So, then, we’ll have to leave?” asked the peasant girl without budging an inch and pondering a while.
“The Minister desires that you should go as soon as possible; he is anxious to know that you have returned to your home as happy as you were before.”
Old Valmajour cast his eye around at the bank-notes:
“As for me, that seems reasonable enough—de qué n’en disés?”
But she would not say anything and waited for the sequel, which Méjean introduced by twisting and turning his purse: