"Frankly, you can't defend them. What would you say if I were to add an ironmongery department to my cloth business? You would say I was mad, eh? Confess, at least, that you don't esteem them."
And as the young girl simply smiled, feeling uncomfortable and realizing how futile the best of reasons would be, he resumed: "In short, you are on their side. We won't talk about it any more, for it's useless to let that part us again. That would be the climax—to see them come between me and my family! Go back with them, if you like; but pray don't worry me with any more of their stories!"
A silence ensued. His previous violence fell to this feverish resignation. As they were suffocating in the narrow room, heated by the gas-burner, the servant had to open the window again; and the damp, pestilential air from the yard blew into the apartment. A dish of sauté potatoes had appeared, and they helped themselves slowly, without a word.
"Look at those two," began Baudu again, pointing with his knife to Geneviève and Colomban. "Ask them if they like your Ladies' Paradise."
Side by side in the places where they had found themselves twice a-day for the last twelve years, Colomban and Geneviève were eating slowly, without uttering a word. He, exaggerating the coarse good-nature of his face, seemed to be concealing, behind his drooping eyelashes, the inward flame which was consuming him; whilst she, her head bowed lower beneath her heavy hair, appeared to be giving way entirely, as if a prey to some secret grief.
"Last year was very disastrous," explained Baudu, "and we have been obliged to postpone the marriage. Just to please them, ask them what they think of your friends."
In order to pacify him, Denise interrogated the young people.
"Naturally I can't be very fond of them, cousin," replied Geneviève. "But never fear, every one doesn't detest them."
And so speaking she looked at Colomban, who was rolling up some bread-crumbs with an absorbed air. But when he felt that the young girl's gaze was turned upon him, he broke out into a series of violent exclamations: "A rotten shop! A lot of rogues, every man-jack of them! In fact a regular pest in the neighbourhood!"
"You hear him! You hear him!" exclaimed Baudu, delighted. "There's one whom they'll never get hold of! Ah! my boy, you're the last of the old stock, we shan't see any more!"