'Listen to me, my dear,' Olympe replied. 'Give way to him and do what he asks. Above all try to be useful to him, since he gives you the chance of being so. I put a bold face on the matter when he is here, but in my own heart I know very well that he would turn us out into the street like dogs if we pushed him too far, and I don't want to have to go away. Are you sure that he will let us stay?'
'Oh yes; don't be afraid,' replied the secretary. 'He has need of me, and he will leave us to feather our nest.'
From this time forward Trouche used to go out every evening about nine o'clock, when the streets were quiet. He told his wife that he went into the old quarter of the town to further the Abbé's cause. Olympe was not at all jealous of his nightly absences, and laughed heartily whenever he brought her back some broad story. She preferred being left quietly to herself, to sip her glass and nibble her cakes in privacy, or to spend her long evenings snugly in bed, devouring the old novels of a circulating-library which she had discovered in the Rue Canquoin. Trouche used to come back slightly under the influence of liquor, but he took off his boots in the hall so as to make no noise as he went upstairs. When he had drunk too much, and reeked of tobacco and brandy, his wife would not let him get into bed, but made him sleep on the sofa. If he became annoying, she caught hold of him, looked him sternly in the face, and said:
'Ovide will hear you. Ovide is coming.'
At this he was as frightened as a child that is threatened with a wolf, and went off to sleep, muttering excuses. In the morning he dressed himself in serious, sedate fashion, wiped from his face all the marks of the previous night's dissipation, and put on a certain cravat, which gave him, he said, quite the air of a parson. As he passed the cafés he bent his head to the ground. At the Home of the Virgin he was held in great respect. Now and then, when the girls were playing in the courtyard, he raised a corner of his curtain and glanced at them with an affectation of fatherliness, though his eyes glistened beneath their lowered lids.
The Trouches were still kept in check by Madame Faujas. The mother and the daughter were perpetually quarrelling, Olympe complaining that she was sacrificed to her brother, and Madame Faujas treating her like a viper whom she ought to have crushed to death in her cradle. Both grasping after the same prey, they kept a close watch on one another, anxious to know which would secure the larger share. Madame Faujas wanted to obtain everything in the house, and she tried to keep the very sweepings from Olympe's clutching fingers. On seeing what large sums her daughter drew from Marthe, she quite burst with anger. When her son shrugged his shoulders at it like a man who despises such matters, and is forced to close his eyes to them, she, on her side, had a stormy explanation with her daughter, whom she branded as a thief, as though the money had been taken from her own pocket.
'There, mother, that will do!' cried Olympe impatiently. 'It isn't your purse, you know, that I have been lightening. Besides, I have only been borrowing a little money; I don't make other people keep me.'
'What do you mean, you wicked hussy?' gasped Madame Faujas with indignation. 'Do you suppose that we don't pay for our food? Ask the cook, and she will show you our account book.'
Olympe broke out into a loud laugh.
'Oh, yes, that's very nice!' she cried; 'I know that account book of yours! You pay for the radishes and butter, don't you? Stay downstairs by all means, mother; stay downstairs on the ground floor. I don't want to interfere with your arrangements. But don't come up here and worry me any more, or I shall make a row, and you know that Ovide has forbidden any noise up here.'