The old bird thought it was necessary to wipe his eyes a bit.
“Pécaïré! Poor Dosithée—!”
“——died at Mostaganem the 14th of January, 1874, born at Valmajour in the commune of Aps—”
In her eagerness and impatience the peasant girl asked:
“How much is it?”
“Three francs, thirty-five cintimes!” cried Guilloche in the voice of a fruit-peddler; and leaving in their hands the paper, in order that they might thoroughly verify the disappointment which had come to them, he flew off with a roar of laughter which seemed infectious, for it rang from story to story down into the street and delighted all that great big village called Montmartre, where the legend of the Valmajours’ inheritance had been widely circulated.
The inheritance from Puyfourcat, only three francs thirty-five! Audiberte pretended to laugh at it harder than the others, but the frightful desire for vengeance upon the Roumestans, who were in her eyes responsible for all their troubles, burned within her and now only increased in fury and looked about for some pretext or means, for the first weapon that lay to hand.
Most singular was the countenance of papa during this disaster. The while his daughter pined away with weariness and fury, and the captive musician became paler with every day passed in his cellar, papa, expanding like a rose, careless of what happened, did not even show his old professional envy and jealousy; he seemed to have arranged some quiet existence for himself outside and away from his family. Hardly had he stowed away the last mouthful of breakfast than off he went; and sometimes in the morning, when she was brushing his clothes, she noticed that a dried fig or a prune or some preserve or other would fall out of his pockets, and when she asked how they came there, the old fellow had one story or another for an explanation.
He had met a peasant woman from their country in the street, or he had run across a man from down there who was coming to see them.
Audiberte tossed her head: “Avaï! Wait till I follow you once!”