The young woman trembled nervously with exasperation. She looked him full in the face, very pale and resolute.
“Will you leave off bothering me about your twenty sous? It’s not twenty sous I want, it’s five hundred francs a month. Yes, five hundred francs for my dress. Ah! you discuss money matters in the kitchen, before the servant! Well! that has decided me to discuss them also! I’ve been restraining myself for a long time past. I want five hundred francs.”
He stood aghast at such a demand. And she commenced the grand quarrel which, during twenty years, her mother had picked with her father, regularly every fortnight. Did he expect to see her walk about barefoot? When one married a woman, one should at least arrange to clothe and feed her decently. She would sooner beg than resign herself to such a pauper existence! It was not her fault if he proved incapable of managing his business properly; oh! yes, incapable, without ideas or initiative, only knowing how to split farthings into four. A man who ought to have made it his glory to acquire a fortune quickly, so as to dress her like a queen, and make the people of The “Ladies’ Paradise” die with rage! But no! with such a poor head as his, bankruptcy was sure to come sooner or later. And from this flow of words emerged the respect, the furious appetite for money, all that worship of wealth, the adoration of which she had learnt in her family, when beholding the mean tricks to which one stoops, merely to appear to possess it.
“Five hundred francs!” said Auguste at length. “I would sooner shut up the shop.”
She looked at him coldly.
“You refuse. Very well, I will run up bills.”
“More debts, you wretched woman!”
In a sudden violent movement, he seized her by the arms, and pushed her against the wall. Then, without a cry, choking with passion, she ran and opened the window, as though to throw herself out; but she retraced her steps, and pushing him in her turn toward the door, turned him out of the room gasping:
“Go away, or I shall do you an injury!”
And she noisily pushed the bolt behind his back. For a moment he listened and hesitated. Then he hastened to go down to the warehouse, again seized with terror, as he beheld Saturnin’s eyes gleaming in the shadow, the noise of the short struggle having brought him from the kitchen.