Madame Josserand, catching her breath, was wrapped for a moment in thought. Then she uttered this last cry:
“And you have a nephew in the police, sir!”
A fresh pause ensued. The light from the little lamp was becoming dimmer, wrappers were flying about beneath Monsieur Josserand’s feverish gestures; and he looked his wife full in the face—his wife in her low neck dress—determined to say everything, and quivering with courage.
“With eight thousand francs a year one can do many things,” resumed he. “You are always complaining. But you should not have arranged your housekeeping on a footing superior to our means. It is your mania for receiving and for paying visits, of having your at homes, of giving tea and pastry—“?
She did not let him finish.
“Now we have come to it! Shut me up in a box at once. Reproach me for not walking out as naked as my hand. And your daughters, sir, who will marry them if we never see any one? We don’t see many people as it is. It does well to sacrifice oneself, to be judged afterwards with such meanness of heart!”
“We have all of us, madame, sacrificed ourselves. Léon had to make way for his sisters; and he left the house to earn his own living without any assistance from us. As for Saturnin, poor child, he does not even know how to read. And I deny myself everything; I pass my nights—”
“Why did you have daughters then, sir? You are surely not going to reproach them with their education, I hope? Any other man in your place would be proud of Hortense’s diploma and of Berthe’s talents. The dear child again delighted every one this evening with her waltz, the ‘Banks of the Oise,’ and her last painting will certainly enchant our guests to-morrow. But you, sir, you are not even a father; you would have sent your children to take cows to grass, instead of sending them to school.”
“Well! I took out an assurance for Berthe’s benefit Was it not you, madame, who, when the fourth payment became due, made use of the money to cover the drawing-room furniture? And, since then, you have even negotiated the premiums that had been paid.”
“Of course! as you leave us to die of hunger. Ah! you may indeed bite your fingers, if your daughters become old maids.”