He shook his head, his eyes fell on the damp floor worn away by generations of customers. Then he continued in a lower voice, “There are moments when I feel myself the most culpable of all in our misfortune. Yes, it's my fault if our poor girl is upstairs devoured by fever. Ought not I to have married them at once, without yielding to my stupid pride, my obstinacy in refusing to leave them the house less prosperous than before? Had I done that she would now have the man she loved, and perhaps their united youthful strength would have accomplished the miracle that I have failed to work. But I am an old fool, and saw through nothing; I didn't know that people fell ill over such things. Really he was an extraordinary fellow: with such a gift for business, and such probity, such simplicity of conduct, so orderly in every way—in short, my pupil.”
He raised his head, still defending his ideas, in the person of the shopman who had betrayed him. Denise could not bear to hear him accuse himself, and she told him so, carried away by her emotion, on seeing him so humble, with his eyes full of tears, he who used formerly to reign as absolute master.
“Uncle, pray don't apologise for him. He never loved Geneviève, he would have run away sooner if you had tried to hasten the marriage. I have spoken to him myself about it; he was perfectly well aware that my cousin was suffering on his account, and you see that did not prevent him leaving. Ask aunt.”
Without opening her lips, Madame Baudu confirmed these words by a nod. The draper turned paler still, blinded by his tears. He stammered out: “It must be in the blood, his father died last year through having led a dissolute life.”
And he once more looked round the obscure shop, his eyes wandering from the empty counters to the full shelves, then resting on Madame Baudu, who was still at the pay-desk, waiting in vain for the customers who did not come.
“Come,” said he, “it's all over. They've ruined our business, and now one of their hussies is killing our daughter.”
No one spoke. The rolling of the vehicles, which occasionally shook the floor, passed like a funereal beating of drums in the still air, stifled under the low ceiling. Suddenly, amidst this gloomy sadness of the old dying shop, could be heard several heavy knocks, struck somewhere in the house. It was Geneviève, who had just awoke, and was knocking with a stick they had left near her bed.
“Let's go up at once,” said Baudu, rising with a start. “Try and be cheerful, she mustn't know.”
He himself rubbed his eyes to efface the trace of his tears. As soon as he had opened the door, on the first storey, they heard a frightened, feeble voice crying: “Oh, I don't like to be left alone. Don't leave me; I'm afraid to be left alone.” Then, when she perceived Denise, Geneviève became calmer, and smiled joyfully. “You've come, then! How I've been longing to see you since yesterday. I thought you also had abandoned me!”
It was a piteous sight. The young girl's room looked out on to the yard, a little room lighted by a livid light At first her parents had put her in their own room, in the front; but the sight of The Ladies' Paradise opposite affected her so much, that they had been obliged to bring her back to her own again. And there she lay, so very thin, under the bed-clothes, that one hardly suspected the form and existence of a human body. Her skinny arms, consumed by a burning fever, were in a perpetual movement of anxious, unconscious searching; whilst her black hair seemed thicker still, and to be eating up her poor face with its voracious vitality, that face in which was agonising the final degenerateness of a family sprung up in the shade, in this cellar of old commercial Paris. Denise, her heart bursting with pity, stood looking at her. She did not at first speak, for fear of giving way to tears. At last she murmured: