“Ah! and that is the reward!” continued Madame Josserand, resuming her walk to and fro across the dining-room. “For twenty years one wears oneself out for these young ladies, one goes in want of everything in order to make them accomplished women, and they will not even let one have the satisfaction of seeing them married according to one’s own fancy. It would be different, if they had ever been refused a single thing! But I have never kept a sou for myself, and have even gone without clothes to dress them as though we had an income of fifty thousand francs. No, really, it is too absurd! When those hussies have had a careful education, have got just as much religion as is necessary, and the airs of rich girls, they leave you in the lurch, they talk of marrying barristers, adventurers, who lead lives of debauchery!”
She stopped before Berthe, and, menacing her with her finger, said:
“As for you, if you follow your sister’s example, you will have me to deal with.”
Then she recommenced stamping round the room, speaking to herself, jumping from one idea to another, contradicting herself with the brazenness of a woman who will always be in the right.
“I did what I ought to do, and were it to be done over again I should do the same. In life, it is only the most shamefaced who lose. Money is money; when one has none, one may as well retire. Whenever I had twenty sous, I always said I had forty; for that is real wisdom, it is better to be envied than pitied. It is no use having a good education if one has not good clothes to wear, for then people despise you. It is not just, but it is so. I would sooner wear dirty petticoats than a cotton dress. Feed on potatoes, but have a chicken when you have any one to dinner. And only fools would say the contrary!”
She looked fixedly at her husband, to whom these last reflections were addressed. The latter, worn out, and declining another battle, had the cowardice to declare:
“It is true; money is everything in our days.”
“You hear,” resumed Madame Josserand, returning towards her daughter. “Go straight ahead and try to give us satisfaction. How is it you let this marriage fall through?”
Berthe understood that her turn had come.
“I don’t know, mamma,” murmured she “A second head-clerk in a government office,” continued the mother; “not yet thirty, with a splendid future before him. Every month he would be bringing you his money; it is something substantial that, there is nothing like it. You have been up to some tomfoolery again, just the same as with the others.”