“Did you hear that girl last night, wriggling about with her stomach-ache? Wasn’t it annoying? Luckily she’s going to leave soon. I had half a mind to call out to her.”
This allusion to the boot-stitcher’s condition caused them to pass all the ladies of the house in review.
At first they talked of Madame Campardon, who at least had nothing more to fear; then of Madame Juzeur, who took her precautions; next of Madame Duveyrier, who was disgusted with her husband; and of Madame Valérie, who went and got her children away from home. And at each recital bursts of laughter arose in blasts from the squalid hole.
Berthe had again turned pale. She waited, no longer even daring to leave the room, her eyes cast down with shame, like one to whom violence was being offered in Octave’s presence. He, exasperated with the servants, felt that they were becoming too filthy, and that he could not again take her in his arms; his desire was giving place to a weariness and a great sadness. But suddenly the young woman started. Lisa had just uttered her name.
“Talking of enjoying oneself, there’s one who seems to me to go in for a rare dose of it! Eh! Adèle, isn’t it true that your Mademoiselle Berthe was up to all manner of tricks at the time you used to wash her petticoats?”
“And now,” said Victoire, “she gets her husband’s assistant to give her a dusting!”
“Hush!” exclaimed Hippolyte softly.
“What for? Her jade of a servant isn’t there to-day. A sly hussy who’d eat you, when one speaks of her mistress! You know she’s a Jewess, and she murdered some one once. Perhaps the handsome Octave dusts her also, in the corners. The governor must have engaged him just to increase the family, the big ninny!”
Then Berthe, suffering indescribable anguish, raised her eyes to her lover. And, cast down, imploring some aid, she stammered, in a painful voice:
“My God! my God!”