“You see, I contain myself, but it is more, oh! it is more than I can stand! Say nothing, sir, say nothing, or really my anger will get the better of me.”
He said nothing, but she vented her wrath upon him all the same.
“It has become unbearable! I warn you, that one of these mornings I shall go off, and leave you here with your two idiotic daughters. Was I born to live such a skinflint life as this? Always cutting farthings into four, never even having a decent pair of boots, and not being able to receive my friends decently! And all that through your fault! Ah! do not shake your head, do not exasperate me more than I am already! Yes, your fault! You deceived me, sir, basely deceived me. One should not marry a woman, when one is decided to let her want for everything. You played the boaster, you pretended you had a fine future before you, you were the friend of your employer’s sons, of those brothers Bemheim, who, since, have merely made a fool of you. What! You dare to pretend that they have not made a fool of you! But you ought to be their partner by now? It is you who made their business what it is, one of the first glass-houses in Paris, and you have remained their cashier, a subordinate, a hireling. Really! you have no spirit; hold your tongue.”
“I get eight thousand francs a year,” murmured the cashier. “It is a very good berth.”
“A good berth, after more than thirty years’ labour?” resumed Madame Josserand. “They grind you down, and you are delighted. Do you know what I would have done, had I been in your place? well! I would have put the business into my pocket twenty times over. It was so easy. I saw it when I married you, and since then I have never ceased advising you to do so. But it required some initiative and intelligence; it was a question of not going to sleep on your leather-covered stool, like a blockhead.”
“Come,” interrupted Monsieur Josserand, “are you going to reproach me now with being honest?”
She jumped up, and advanced towards him, flourishing her Lamartine.
“Honest! in what way do you mean? Begin by being honest towards me. Others do not count till afterwards, I hope! And I repeat, sir, it is not honest to take a young girl in, pretending to be ambitious to become rich some day, and then to end by losing what little wits you had in looking after somebody else’s cashbox. On my word, I was nicely swindled! Ah! if it were to happen over again, and if I had only known your family!”
She was walking violently about. He could not restrain a slight sign of impatience, in spite of his great desire for peace.
“You would do better to go to bed, Eléonore,” said he. “It is past one o’clock, and I assure you this work is pressing. My family has done you no harm, so do not speak of it.”