'Stay here,' said the young girl carelessly. 'I will go for you. Where's your money?'
'No, no, I'll go myself. You would never find it. It is put away.'
Madame Chanteau stammered out these words, and she and Pauline exchanged a silent glance, at which they both grew pale. There was a moment of painful hesitation, and then the aunt went upstairs, quite shivering with suppressed anger, and feeling sure that her ward knew perfectly well where she was going to get those two francs eighty-five centimes. Why, she asked herself, had she always insisted upon her presence when taking the money from the drawer? The memory of her old scrupulous probity quite angered her now, convinced as she was that her niece was following her in imagination, and watching her as she opened the drawer, took out the money, and then closed the secrétaire again. After she had come downstairs and paid the baker, her anger vented itself in an attack upon the girl.
'Good gracious! what a state your dress is in! What have you been doing with yourself? You have been drawing water for the kitchen, surely. Eh? Be good enough to let Véronique do her own work, if you please. Upon my word, I believe you have gone out of your way on purpose to make a mess of yourself. You seem to have no idea that your clothes cost money. I don't get so much for your keep that it is easy to make both ends meet!'
And so she went on. Pauline had at first made some slight attempt to defend herself, but she soon refrained, and listened to her aunt in silence, with an aching heart. She was quite conscious that the other's affection for her had been on the wane for some time, and when she was alone with Véronique she often gave way to tears. At those times the servant would rattle the saucepans and affect to be very busy, in order to excuse herself from taking notice or siding with one party or the other. Although she was continually growling at Pauline, she was now beginning to feel some qualms of conscience and to doubt whether the girl was receiving fair treatment.
When the winter came round again, Lazare grew quite despondent. Once again his whim had changed; he began to hate the works. There had been fresh pecuniary embarrassments in November, and he had fallen into a perfect state of panic. He had got over previous worries, but this one seemed to reduce him to despair, to render him hopeless of everything; and he began to revile science. The idea of making anything out of sea-weed was ridiculous! They might improve their system as much as they liked, but they would never be able to drag out of Nature anything that Nature didn't want them to have. He even fell foul of his master, the great Herbelin himself, who, having been good enough to visit the works at Golden Bay, had seemed quite distressed by all the elaborate appliances, which, he said, were perhaps on too large a scale to yield the results which had been obtained with careful small experiments in his own laboratory. The truth of the matter was, that, except in laboratory experiments on a small scale, no means was yet known of maintaining the low temperature which was necessary for the crystallisation of the various substances. Lazare had, indeed, succeeded in extracting a certain quantity of bromide of potassium from sea-weed, but, as he could not sufficiently isolate the four or five other bodies mingled with it, the result was failure. He felt quite sick of the whole business, and confessed himself beaten. One evening, when Madame Chanteau and Pauline besought him to be calm and to make one last effort, there came a very painful scene, when unkind recriminations were indulged in, bitter tears shed, and doors banged with such noisy violence that poor old Chanteau jumped up in his arm-chair in sheer fright.
'You will end by killing me!' the young man screamed, as he rushed away and locked himself up in his room, completely overcome by childish despair.
At breakfast-time the next morning he brought down with him a paper covered over with figures. Out of Pauline's hundred and eighty thousand francs, nearly a hundred thousand were already gone. Was there any sense in wasting more money? It would all be lost. He was still under the influence of the previous evening's alarm. His mother, too, now seemed inclined to back him up. She had never been able to go against him and vex him, even in his faults. It was only Pauline who still tried to discuss the matter. The announcement of the expenditure of those hundred thousand francs quite dazed her. What! they had taken more than half her fortune, and those hundred thousand francs would be utterly lost if they did not try to struggle on! But her arguments and persuasions were all in vain, and she went on talking to no purpose till Véronique had cleared the table. Then, to avoid breaking out into reproaches against them, she rushed off to her own room, quite sick at heart.
There was a short interval of silence while the embarrassed family lingered before the table.
'The girl is evidently avaricious,' said Madame Chanteau at last. 'It is a pitiful failing, but I won't have Lazare worried to death with all these bothers and vexations.'