Whenever he dined out, he escaped from the drawing-room to go and pinch the cook before her stove; and when she was willing to trust him with her key, he would take his departure before midnight, and go and wait patiently for her in her room, seated on a trunk, in his black dress coat and white tie. On the morrow, he would leave by the principal staircase towards ten o’clock, and pass before the doorkeeper as though he had been making an early call on one of the tenants. So long as he was pretty punctual at the stockbroker’s, his father was satisfied. Moreover, he was now employed in attending the Bourse from twelve to three. It would sometimes happen that on a Sunday he would spend the whole day in some servant’s bed, happy, lost, his nose buried in the pillow.
“You, who are going to be so rich some day!” said Octave, his face retaining an expression of disgust.
Then Trublot learnedly declared:
“My dear fellow, you don’t know what it is; don’t speak about it.”
And he stood up for Julie, a tall Burgundian of forty, with her big face pitted with small-pox, but who had the body of a superb woman. One might disrobe the ladies of the house; they were all sticks, not one would come up to her knee. Besides that, she was a girl very well to do; and to prove it he opened her drawers, displayed a bonnet, some jewellery, and some chemises trimmed with lace, no doubt stolen from Madame Duveyrier. Octave, indeed, now noticed a certain coquettishness about the room, some gilded cardboard boxes on the drawers, a chintz curtain hung over the skirts, all the accessaries of a cook aping the grand lady.
“There is no denying, you see, that one may own to this one,” repeated Trublot. “If they were only all like her!”
At this moment a noise came from the servants’ staircase. It was Adèle coming up to wash her ears, Madame Josserand having furiously forbidden her to proceed with her work until she had cleaned them with soap. Trublot peeped out and recognised her.
“Shut the door quick!” said he very anxiously. “Hush! don’t say a word!”
He pricked up his ear, and listened to Adèle’s heavy footstep along the passage.
“You sleep with her too, then?” asked Octave, surprised at his paleness, and guessing that he dreaded a scene.