“Come now, Monsieur Vabre, who are an honest man, what would you say in my place? I arrived here this morning a little earlier than usual. I entered her room with the sugar from the café and three four-sou pieces, just for a surprise for her, and I find her with that pig Gueulin! No, there, frankly what would you say?”
Auguste, greatly embarrassed, turned very red. He at first thought that the uncle knew of his misfortune and was making a fool of him. But the other added, without even waiting for a reply:
“Ah! listen, mademoiselle, you don’t know what it is you have done! I who was becoming young again, who felt so delighted at having found a nice quiet little nook, where I was once more beginning to believe in happiness! Yes, you were an angel, a flower, in short something fresh which helped me to forget a lot of dirty women.”
A genuine emotion contracted his throat, his voice choked in accents of profound suffering. Everything was crumbling away, and he wept for the loss of the ideal, with the hiccoughs of a remnant of drunkenness.
“I did not know uncle,” stammered Fifi, whose sobs redoubled in presence of this pitiful spectacle; “no, I did not know it would cause you so much grief.”
And indeed she did not look as if she did know. She retained her ingenuous eyes, her odor of chastity, the naivete of a little girl unable as yet to distinguish a gentleman from a lady. Aunt Menu, moreover, swore that at heart she was innocent.
“Do be calm, Monsieur Narcisse. She loves you well all the same. I felt that it would not be very agreeable to you. I said to her: ‘If Monsieur Narcisse learns this, he will be annoyed.’ But she has scarcely lived as yet, has she? She does not know what pleases, nor what does not please. Do not weep any more, as her heart is always for you.”
As neither the child nor the uncle listened to her, she turned toward Auguste, she told him how much more anxious such an adventure made her feel for her niece’s future.
“Perhaps you know Villeneuve, near Lille?” said she in conclusion. “I come from there. It is a pretty large town———”
But Auguste’s patience was at an end. He shook himself free of the aunt, and turned toward Bachelard, whose noisy despair was calming down.