“We’ll see, we’ll see,” the butter dealer curtly replied.
However, on reaching the house a preliminary parley—as Mademoiselle Saget had opined—proved to be necessary. Madame Leonce refused to allow the women to go up to her tenant’s room. She put on an expression of severe austerity, and seemed greatly shocked by the sight of La Sarriette’s loosely fastened fichu. However, after the old maid had whispered a few words to her and she was shown the key, she gave way. When they got upstairs she surrendered the rooms and furniture to the others article by article, apparently as heartbroken as if she had been compelled to show a party of burglars the place where her own money was secreted.
“There, take everything and have done with it!” she cried at last, throwing herself into an arm-chair.
La Sarriette was already eagerly trying the key in the locks of different closets. Madame Lecœur, all suspicion, pressed her so closely that she exclaimed: “Really, aunt, you get in my way. Do leave my arms free, at any rate.”
At last they succeeded in opening a wardrobe opposite the window, between the fireplace and the bed. And then all four women broke into exclamations. On the middle shelf lay some ten thousand francs in gold, methodically arranged in little piles. Gavard, who had prudently deposited the bulk of his fortune in the hands of a notary, had kept this sum by him for the purposes of the coming outbreak. He had been wont to say with great solemnity that his contribution to the revolution was quite ready. The fact was that he had sold out certain stock, and every night took an intense delight in contemplating those ten thousand francs, gloating over them, and finding something quite roysterous and insurrectional in their appearance. Sometimes when he was in bed he dreamed that a fight was going on in the wardrobe; he could hear guns being fired there, paving-stones being torn up and piled into barricades, and voices shouting in clamorous triumph; and he said to himself that it was his money fighting against the Government.
La Sarriette, however, had stretched out her hands with a cry of delight.
“Paws off, little one!” exclaimed Madame Lecœur in a hoarse voice.
As she stood there in the reflection of the gold, she looked yellower than ever—her face discoloured by biliousness, her eyes glowing feverishly from the liver complaint which was secretly undermining her. Behind her Mademoiselle Saget on tip-toe was gazing ecstatically into the wardrobe, and Madame Leonce had now risen from her seat, and was growling sulkily.
“My uncle said I was to take everything,” declared the girl.
“And am I to have nothing, then; I who have done so much for him?” cried the doorkeeper.